Vineet Gairola is a Ph.D. Scholar of Psychology at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. He has been conducting research on ritual practices and worship in the Garhwal Himalayas for more than four years. For the past 2 years, he has been providing counseling services to people to improve their overall well-being. He is primarily interested in the correspondence between spirituality, psychopathology, and analytical psychology through documenting the worship practitioners' spiritual and mystical experiences, including the divine possession seen at various temple sites and places holding a spiritual significance. For his Ph.D., he is examining various ritual practices and worships involving devī-devtās (Hindu deities) and how the spiritual and divine element is entwined in the daily lives of the entire community. He is the winner of the Excellence in Research Award by IIT Hyderabad, the Stephen Mitchell Award given by the American Psychological Association (Division 39), the Psychoanalytic Research Exceptional Contribution Award by the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), Student Research Award 2021 from the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (Division 36 of the APA), and Asian Student Membership Scholarship by ANHS. Additionally, he is a dancer and a musician for the past 20 years and has a band named Araadhak. 

LinkedIn: Vineet Gairola, Doctoral Researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad