Thalia Eley is Professor of Developmental Behavioural Genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She leads the Emotional Development, Intervention and Treatment (EDIT) lab, and her work focuses on the interplay between genetic and environmental factors in the development and treatment of anxiety and depression.

For her undergraduate degree, she studied Social and Political Sciences, with a focus on psychology, at Trinity College Cambridge. She undertook her PhD at the Institute of Child Health, University College London, where she studied the role of genetic and environmental influences on depression and anxiety in young people. After two MRC research fellowships, she became a member of academic staff at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience and was promoted to Professor in 2013.

Her work is highly interdisciplinary using both the twin design and molecular genetic approaches, and drawing on cognitive, clinical and developmental psychology. She has written over 140 empirical papers and received numerous awards including the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society, the Lilly-Molecular Psychiatry Award, and most recently the James Shields Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Twin Studies. She is one of the Chairs of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Anxiety Group.

Professor Eley is passionate about enabling early career researchers and was Chair of the Research and Innovation Committee for over five years, developing and leading numerous initiatives aimed at supporting this group. She is keen to see greater diversity in those conducting, and taking part, in scientific research.

Research interests

Professor Eley is particularly interested in finding ways in which genetic approaches can inform psychological practice as well as theory. Using molecular genetics, she is exploring the role of specific genetic markers in the development of anxiety and depression, and as predictors of psychological therapies response for these conditions. With her close colleague Professor Gerome Breen, head of the NIHR Maudsley BioResource Centre, she is leading new Genetics Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) Study. Watch a video of them describing the purpose of this study here, and an animation about the study here. She is particularly excited about this area of work as it has the potential to be useful in making clinical decisions.

She is also keen to understand why anxiety and depression tend to run in families, and whether this is due to sharing home life or whether it is due to sharing genes. She is the Director of the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS), the largest longitudinal twin birth cohort in the UK. As the twins reach their mid-twenties, the team is particularly excited about recruiting the next generation into the Children of TEDS (CoTEDS) Study.

Expertise and public engagement

The EDIT lab runs a blog. The GLAD Study participants are recruited via the media and social media, so the team has written numerous articles (and had lots of articles written about them), as well as featuring on TV and traditional media.

Her team has worked closely with many charities (e.g. MIND) and with the British Psychological Society and Royal College of Psychiatrists all of whom supported and promoted the GLAD study.

Professor Eley has written blogs for Mental Elf and have spoken at Pint of Science twice.

She has given many lecturers about her work:

• Inaugural lecture (Autumn 2013) here, in which she gave an overview of the work she undertook from her PhD in the 1990s until 2013 when she became a professor.
• Therapy genetics lecture (Spring 2017) here, as part of the Stockholm Psychiatry lecture series.
• This lecture is a brief update of the work of the Psychiatric Genetics Consortium Anxiety group (Spring 2020).

Awards

• 2021 Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences
• 2019 KCL University Research Project of the year (GLAD Study)
• 2017 James Shields Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Twin Studies
• 2017 KCL Graduate School IoPPN Supervisory Excellence Award
• 2004 Lilly-Molecular Psychiatry Award
• 2002 British Psychological Society Spearman Medal

Teaching:

• SGDP Education lead
• Assessment Sub-Board Chair for SGDP DEV-PP Masters programme
• Teaching on genetics of anxiety, depression and treatment response.
• Grant writing training.