Ceyda Kiyak

Biography

Ceyda Kiyak is a PhD student in School of Psychology at University of East Anglia. Prior to UEA, she successfully completed two master’s degrees:  MRes in Computing and Informatics at Bournemouth University in England (2022), and MSc in Experimental Psychology at University of Milan Bicocca in Italy (2021). She did BSc (Hons) in Psychology at Izmir University of Economics in Turkey (2010). During her bachelor’s degree, she attended the Department of Psychology at Maynooth University in Ireland as an exchange student through the Erasmus Exchange Programme.

Before her academic career, she worked as a certified Psychotherapist specialised in addiction, trauma, and sex therapy at the Turkish Ministry of Health (2010–2020). She also worked as an Academic Visitor at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (Addictions Department) at King's College London (2017-2018) with a research grant awarded by the Turkish Ministry of Health.

Research

Ceyda Kiyak has an interdisciplinary background in Psychology, Neuroscience and Computing. While her work comprises developing psychological interventions for mental health, she is also interested in integrating technology into psychology practice, such as VR therapy, smart-phone applications and serious video games for the treatment and prevention of mental health problems.

Areas of interest: Addiction (alcohol, gambling, sex, cybersex, and digital addiction), neuroscience of loneliness, human attachment and sexuality, gender differences in brain and behaviour, intersectionality, and academic freedom.

MRes thesis title: Mind the gap: Interrupting dissociation of players through real-time digital tasks during online gambling

MSc thesis title: To drink or not to drink: The impact of cue-elicited multisensory imagery on alcohol craving

BSc project title: Hemispheric asymmetry in menstrual cycle and lateralisation in top-down processing