I completed my BA and MA studies at METU (Middle East Technical University) in 1997 and 2000, respectively. Then, in 2002, I obtained my second master’s degree, in Applied Linguistics, from the University of Essex. In 2005, I received my PhD in English Language Teaching from METU. Throughout my postgraduate studies (1997-2005), I worked as a research assistant at the Department of Foreign Language Education at METU. Following a three-year period (2006-2009) at Başkent University’s Department of Foreign Language Education, I went to the UK to work at the Oriental Institute of Oxford University (now the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) and as a British Academy post-doctoral research fellow at Essex University. In 2011, I returned to my alma mater, where I  still work as a Professor of Linguistics.

My research mainly focuses on morphological processing using experimental psycholinguistic methods in native, second, and heritage languages. Additionally, I conduct studies and projects on sentence processing, multilingualism, second language acquisition, and open science. As part of an interdisciplinary research team, I investigate morphological and syntactic processing in healthy individuals as well as in individuals diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Schizophrenia. In the recent past, I started conducting research with an international team of researchers from 23 countries to determine the language skills that children and adolescents need to effectively participate in the judicial process.