Kelly received First Class Honours from her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Limerick. During her bachelor’s degree, she conducted a research project which investigated the impact of induced psychological stress, anxiety, and personality traits on the creation of false memories as supervised by Dr. Cillian McHugh. Kelly also took part in the Erasmus Student Exchange Programme and studied Clinical and Neuropsychology at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
This inspired her to purse a master’s degree in Clinical Neuroscience at NUI Galway, where she recently graduated with First Class Honours. As part of her master’s degree, Kelly conducted her thesis in partnership with the ERC funded iRELATE project with Principal Investigator Professor Gary Donohoe entitled ‘Modelling the impact of structural deficits and childhood trauma on the association between stress reactivity on social cognition’ comparing individuals with schizophrenia and health controls.
Kelly’s research interests lie within harnessing the power of modern technology to advance our understanding of the neurobiological basis of mental health phenomena using a transdiagnostic approach. Kelly will complete her PhD working with the ERC funded ‘Making and Breaking a Habit’ project which aims to use cutting edge methodologies such as smartphone-based assessments, electrophysiology, and causal manipulation in an attempt to uncover how habits form, how they interact with goal-directed capacity, and how they relate to mental health symptomatology.
Publications
Donegan, K. R., & Gillan, C. M. (2022). New principles and new paths needed for online research in mental health: Commentary on Burnette et al. (2021). International Journal of Eating Disorders, 1– 4. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.23670
gillanlab.com 