Professor Zachary Steel is Professorial Research Fellow in the Centre for Mental Health and Brain Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology. He is a clinician and researcher in trauma-related mental health whose work over more than 40 years has focused on populations affected by trauma, including homeless youth, veterans, emergency service workers, refugees, asylum seekers, and those affected by interpersonal and family trauma.

Across more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, reports, and guidelines, Professor Steel’s work has examined how trauma, displacement, social adversity, institutional processes, and recovery environments shape mental health outcomes. His research has made major contributions to traumatic stress epidemiology, refugee and asylum seeker mental health, post-conflict recovery, occupational psychological injury, PTSD and complex PTSD, moral injury, and the development of trauma-informed models of care. A central theme across this work has been the need to understand psychological injury not only as an individual clinical condition, but as something shaped by systems, relationships, social conditions, and pathways to care.

From 2014 to 2024, he held the St John of God Chair of Trauma and Mental Health, where he supported the development, evaluation, and clinical governance of specialist traumatic stress services, including a 30-bed inpatient PTSD program for veterans, emergency service workers, and other trauma-exposed occupational groups. He is a past President of the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and currently serves on the board of the NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors.

At Swinburne, his current work focuses on translational partnerships with industry and service-sector partners, particularly specialist trauma services. This includes learning and evaluation platforms, implementation science, and service development aimed at strengthening evidence-informed care for communities affected by trauma, displacement, and institutional adversity.