Professor Kirtley completed her BSc in Psychology at the University of Stirling in 2011, and graduated with her PhD in Psychological Medicine from the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory at the University of Glasgow in 2016. She went on to hold postdoctoral positions at the University of Glasgow, University of Ghent, and KU Leuven, before being appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Research Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Contextual Psychiatry at KU Leuven in Belgium in 2023. Professor Kirtley is Associate Editor of Archives of Suicide Research, an Open Science Advisor and Consulting Editor at Clinical Psychological Science, and an editorial board member for Crisis, and Infant and Child Development.
Her current research uses experience sampling methods (ESM) to investigate dynamic processes involved in ideation-to-action transitions in adolescents who think about and engage in suicidal behaviour, with a focus on social processes, future thinking, and exposure to suicidal behaviour. Following on from her PhD work on emotional and physical pain and self-harm, she has maintained a strong interest in investigating the relationship between pain experiences (both chronic and acute) and suicidal and non-suicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviours.
As well as her work in the suicide research domain, Prof. Kirtley also conducts research on youth mental health more broadly, mainly within the SIGMA study, a landmark longitudinal study of youth mental health and well-being using ESM in Flanders, Belgium. She also leads a number of projects to increase transparency and reproducibility in clinical psychology and ESM research, including designing a pre-registration template for experience sampling studies, leading the Experience Sampling Method Item Repository, and developing tools and tutorials about open science practices in suicide and longitudinal developmental psychology research.