Principle Researcher
Miri Besken
Miri Besken is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Bilkent University. Prior to completing her Ph.D in Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she obtained her B.S. in Psychology from Middle East Technical University and an M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Koç University. Before coming to Bilkent University, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Heinrich Heine Universität in Düsseldorf, Germany. Her research interests lie in the intersection of memory, learning and metacognitive processes with a focus on healthy young adults.
Phone: +90 (312) 290 17 28
E-mail: mbesken@bilkent.edu.tr
Graduate Students
Öykü Aydın
Öykü received her B.S. and M.A. in Psychology from Çankaya University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at Bilkent University. Her research primarily centers on the implications of encoding strategies in long-term memory. She is continuing her doctoral studies under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Miri Besken. Broadly, she is working on how the cognitive offloading phenomenon applies to long-term memory. Her current project explores how photo-taking and note-taking strategies affect memory and metamemory processes, as well as underlying cognitive mechanisms.
E-mail: oyku.aydin@bilkent.edu.tr
Bengi Kamar
Bengi graduated with a B.S. in Psychology from Izmir University of Economics in 2024. She is currently an M.A. student in Psychology at Bilkent University, continuing her studies under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Miri Besken. Her research interest is value-directed remembering (VDR) paradigm.
E-mail: bengi.kamar@bilkent.edu.tr
Halil Dönmez
Halil obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Ege University and recently began his Master’s studies in Psychology at Bilkent University under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Miri Besken. His recent research interest has been the interaction between emotions and memory performance, with a particular focus on disgust. However, he now plans to focus on broader memory concepts.
E-mail: halil.donmez@bilkent.edu.tr
Undergraduate Students
Ayşenur Baş
Dilara Alpertürk
Melissa Altınkaya
Melissa is a 4th-year undergraduate student in the Psychology Department of Bilkent University. She is currently working on her senior project under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Miri Besken on the Effects of Perceptual Fluency on False Memory. Her research focuses on memory processes, with particular interest in false memory and metamemory.
Alumni
- Nilsu Atılgan (Assistant Professor at Bilkent University)
- Meltem Karaca (Assistant Professor at Assumption University)
- Belgin Ünal (Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Michigan)
- Derya Karademir (Ph.D. student at Boğaziçi University)
- Ecem Eylül Ardıç (Ph.D. student at WUSTL)
- Elif Hilal Kurt (Ph.D. student at Sabancı University)
- Ezgi Melisa Yüksel (Ph.D. student at UW-Madison)
- Ezgi Özgan (Ph.D. student at Bilkent University)
- Fatih Yavuz (Ph.D. student at METU)
- Gizem Filiz (Ph.D. student at WUSTL)
- Samet Kaya (Ph.D. student at UNC)
- Esra Elibüyük Okumuş (Former MA student at Memory Lab)
- Elif Cemre Solmaz (Former MA student at Memory Lab)
- Gamze Nur Eroğlu (Former MA student at Memory Lab)
- Rengin Dalkıran (Former MA student at Memory Lab)
- Ayşin Aytatlı (Former B.A. student at Memory Lab)
- Eftelya Ekin Tomak (Former B.A. student at Memory Lab)
- Sencer Topcu (Former B.A. student at Memory Lab)
- Aşkın Su Aşkınol (M.Sc. student at Maastricht University)
- Berru Benan Orhan (M.A. student at KU Leuven)
- Deren Ateş (MA student at Koç University)
- Duygu Uraş (M.A. student at METU)
- İpek Şahin (M.A. student at Sabancı University)
- Meryem Gökçe Yavuz (M.A. student at Boğaziçi University)
- Nilsu Sağlam (M.Sc. student at University of Tübingen)
- Şevval Yörük (M.Sc. student at Leiden University)
- Ceren Bal (Analyst at SKIM)
- Ezgi Ersen Ceylan (Senior UX Researcher at Insider)