Kelly Donegan
Postdoctoral Researcher
Profile
Biography
- Postdoctoral Researcher, University of York (2025 - )
- DPhil Psychology, Trinity College Dublin (2021 - 2025)
- MSc Clinical Neuroscience, University of Galway (2019 - 2020)
- BSc Psychology, University of Limerick (2015 - 2019)
Career
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Cognition and Mental Health Lab at the University of York, investigating self-efficacy and control-seeking in eating disorders using online data collection methods and computational modelling. I completed my DPhil in Psychology at Trinity College Dublin under Professor Claire Gillan, where I explored the cognitive mechanisms underlying repetitive behaviours in psychiatry through scalable, gamified cognitive tasks. My academic background includes an MSc in Clinical Neuroscience from the University of Galway and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Limerick, which included a semester at Radboud University in the Netherlands.
Research
Overview
Understanding the relationship between eating disorders, self-efficacy and control-seeking
Projects
I am working on a Springboard grant award to Dr. Alex Pike that aims to investigate how individuals with a range of eating disorder symptoms learn about the efficacy of their actions, how they value the ability to exert control, and if these processes are causally linked.
Research group(s)
Cognition and Mental Health Lab
Collaborators
- Dr Alex Pike
Publications
Selected publications
Donegan, K. R., Suddell, S., … & Gillan, C. M. (2024). Psychiatric correlates of stimulus-response habit learning. Pre-registration: https://osf.io/quwb3
Donegan, K.R., Hossein, S., … & Gillan, C.M. (2024). Model-based planning is not affected by antidepressant, internet based cognitive behavioural therapy or ketamine infusion therapy in depression. Under Review. Pre-print: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/hbt6j
Donegan, K.R., Brown, V.M., … & Gillan, C.M. (2023). Using smartphones to optimise and scale-up the assessment of model-based planning. Communications Psychology, 1, 31.
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), The International Journal of Eating Disorders, 55, 278 - 281.
Full publications list
See Google scholar and ORCID.
External activities
Memberships
- British Association for Psychopharmacology
Invited talks and conferences
- Invited talk for the Reinforcement Learning and Decision-Making Conference (RLDM), Trinity College Dublin (June 2025)
- Invited talk at the Bodily-focused Repetitive Behaviours Conference, Oxford University (September 2024)
- Symposium talk at the Computational Psychiatry Conference (CPC), University of Minnesota (July 2024)
- Invited talk for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Advancing Digital Endpoints & Digital Health Technologies Webinar: Investigations from Early Career Researchers (October 2023)
