Başak İnce Çağlar has been a Research Associate in the Centre for Research in Eating and Weight Disorders (CREW) since November 2021. Her research focuses on eating disorders, with particular interests in biopsychosocial and interpersonal processes, loneliness and social connection, illness and recovery trajectories, and early and personalised interventions.

Başak currently coordinates the EDIFY consortium (Eating Disorders: Delineating illness and recovery trajectories to inform personalised prevention and early intervention in young people). Within EDIFY, she coordinates the STORY study, a longitudinal cohort study investigating illness and recovery trajectories in young people with eating disorders, and the RaISE trial, which investigates intermittent theta burst stimulation for young people with persistent anorexia nervosa.

Başak is Principal Investigator of a project funded by a Medical Research Foundation Eating Disorders Research Launchpad Grant, examining loneliness and eating disorders in young people. Her work explores how loneliness can be measured in this population and the bidirectional and longitudinal relationships between loneliness and eating disorder symptoms.

Alongside her research, Başak has worked as an Honorary Therapist in the Adult Eating Disorders Outpatient Service at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust since November 2023.

Before joining King’s, Başak worked as a Research Assistant and later as an Assistant Professor in Turkey, and completed a research visit at Tübingen University Hospital in Germany. She studied Psychology at Istanbul Bilgi University, completed an MSc in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, specialising in Psychopathology, at Maastricht University, and an MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology at Istanbul Arel University.

Research Interests

• Eating disorders
• Loneliness and social connection
• Illness and recovery trajectories
• Prevention, early intervention and personalised approaches
• Digital and novel approaches to measurement and treatment

Expertise and Public Engagement

Başak chairs the EDIFY Youth Advisory Group and works with young people with lived experience of eating disorders across the research process, from study development to dissemination. She has also contributed to the co-production of creative and public-facing research outputs with young people, artists and other stakeholders, as well as science communication activities involving early-career researchers and youth advisors.