Prithvi Iyer (3rd year Undergraduate BA (Hons) Psychology) Spring 2018

Prithvi Iyer is a 3rd year psychology major with a minor in international relations from Ashoka University. He intends to pursue a thesis project with professor Ghosh that is in the realm of conflict psychology. More specifically, his thesis aims to understand the coping mechanisms used by individuals affected by a political conflict with respect to daily stressors that may be experienced in daily life. Most psychology research in the realm of conflict deals with its implications on depression , anxiety and PTSD. He is more interested in whether political conflict could fundamentally change the way people cope with seemingly trivial stressors that may not be indigenous to conflict victims.

Current affiliation: Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai

Saloni Aggarwal (3rd year Undergraduate BA (Hons) Psychology) - Monsoon 2017 and Spring 2018

Saloni is working on a project on Domestic Violence (DV) and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Haryana. The project is trying to address a very common issue in our own neighborhood community and trying to find markers to detect IPV. The project covers a host of demographic, socio-economic and psychological factors that may contribute or be a result of DV/ IPV.

Current Affiliation: University of Edinburgh, UK

Aditya Chauhan (3rd year Undergraduate BA (Hons) Psychology- Spring 2018)

Aditya Chauhan is a 3rd year undergraduate and psychology major at Ashoka University. While most of his heart and mind lies in cricket, some of it also lies in unravelling the patterns of society which is why social psychology remains his favourite domain in psychology.

Project: Identifying strategic risk markers in men involved in Intimate Partner Violence.

Aayushi Desphande [3rd Year UG, BA (Hons) Psychology], ISM spring 2018:

Aayushi Deshpande is a third year undergraduate. She is working on understanding resilience and empathy in young adult children from fragmented families in urban India; children of single parents and children who have witnessed domestic violence. She is a huge believer in art as a means of cultivating empathy and as an agent of healing.

Current Affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, USA

Ayushi Jain [4th year UG, BA (Hons) Psychology) ISM Spring 2017

Ayushi Jain is a 4th year student at Ashoka University with a Bachelors degree in Psychology. She has done media and marketing and advertising internships in corporates like P&G, IMRB International, McCann and even at her own university. She has done both qualitative and quantitative research on various topics such as celebrity worship across cultures, romantic attitudes of university students, and water wastage on the university campus. Her most recent research, which assessed the relationship between domestic violence and mental health among women of rural India led her to found a society called Ruhi on her university campus. Ruhi allows a cultural and educational exchange of knowledge between help staff workers and students on the university campus. Essentially, the students teach the help staff workers English and in exchange learn a great deal about the cultural backgrounds of the workers through such intimate, one-on-one interactions with the workers. Ayushi was also a teaching assistant for a clinical psychology course as a part of which she managed a classroom of 20 students, created and graded exam papers and tutored students who faced challenges in the course.

Current affiliation: University of Warwick, UK

Vedika Lal (MLS student) ISM Spring 2017

Vedika Lal is currently pursuing a Research Master's degree in Social Psychology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Prior to this, she has received a postgraduate degree in Liberal Arts at Ashoka University and an undergraduate degree in Psychology at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. In addition to academics, she has previously worked with a social organisation that designs leadership programs for the youth, and with a social organisation that focuses on enhancing education leadership. She has also assisted professors in exploring the relationship between domestic violence and mental health among women from a North-Indian rural population, and synthesizing data on the the effects of avoidant emotions on perceptual limits. She is thus committed to understanding and applying theoretically viable and empirically sound psychology principles to better understand human behavior in diverse contexts.

Current affiliation: Vrije University, Amsterdam, Netherlands, EU