Caglayan is a PhD student in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology whose research interests focus on understanding long-term human-environment interactions. In particular, she is interested in the impact of rapid climate changes on ancient societies and different human responses, and in the development of water management and sustainable irrigation practices.
Caglayan holds a BSc in Environmental Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU, Turkey), a BA in Protohistory and Near Eastern Archaeology from Ankara University (Turkey) and an MSc in Settlement Archaeology from METU (Turkey). She wrote her MSc thesis on the 4.2 ka BP climatic change and its effects on the human societies in western Anatolia through interpreting paleoenvironmental, bioarchaeological, and archaeological data together. She has participated in several excavation projects in Turkey. Since 2017, she has been a member of the Konya Regional Archaeological Survey Project (KRASP).