Dr. Ayşe Akan

Dr. Ayşe Akan is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology and the founder of the Translational Clinical Psychology Lab at Boğaziçi University. She holds undergraduate degrees in Psychology (BSc, Istanbul Ticaret University) and History (BA, Boğaziçi University), an MSc in Mental Health Studies from King's College London (Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience), and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (D Clin Psych) from the University of Essex, UK.

Dr. Akan trained and practised as a clinical psychologist within NHS services in the United Kingdom for over five years, working across inpatient and community settings with children, young people, adults, and older adults. Her clinical posts included roles at North East London NHS Foundation Trust and Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where she delivered evidence-based psychological therapies, conducted clinical assessments, supervised trainee psychologists, and led service evaluation projects.

She is registered as a Practitioner Clinical Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) in the UK, accredited as a Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist by the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP), which is a member organisation of European Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies (EABCT), and holds the European Certificate in Psychology (EuroPsy).

Her most recent research programme focuses on the cultural adaptation and effectiveness of psychological interventions, with particular attention to underserved and underrepresented populations. She is currently the principal investigator of two funded, registered clinical trials examining culturally adapted CBT and DBT-informed group interventions for university students (UniWELL). She also serves as qualitative lead on an international RCT addressing psychological trauma in people with lived experience of leprosy in Ethiopia, funded by the Leprosy Research Initiative.

Dr. Akan uses both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, including randomised controlled trial designs, clinically significant change analysis, reflexive thematic analysis, thematic synthesis, and constructionist grounded theory. Her broader research interests span emotion regulation, trauma, autism, psychosis, dissociation, migration and mental health, and critical and participatory approaches to clinical research.