ABOUT ME

I serve as an assistant professor in the department of humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Palakkad and as a distinguished fellow at the Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi.  As a queer mental health researcher,  'ethic of care' and 'epistemic justice'  heavily guide my work in approaching mental distress giving people the  'permission to narrate' so that  voices from the margins are amplified, listened to and heard. I draw from my extensive firsthand knowledge and experience of the social, psychological, and emotional pressures  and fatal vulnerabilities placed on members of the queer/trans/LGBTQIA+ community and is  committed to fostering therapeutic relationships sensitive to human diversity, including queer-trans, gender-expansive, and non-binary people in my intersectional, affirmative mental health care. My research informs clinical practice and vice-versa for  I am an anti-oppressive, trauma-informed, body-positive, sex-positive mental health practitioner who strives to create and promote nonjudgmental and compassionate therapeutic relationships that offer recognition to the profound emotional  landscapes that are trained to silence, often waiting  to be heard.  I firmly believe in the radical act of feeling for feelings are not something to be controlled but are conversations to be respected and loved. I am particilarly  interested in understanding  'wounding' as a result of having life controlled for appeasing others.

Trained as a clinical psychologist, my experiences in state-run mental health training institutions and clinical practice in India critically illuminate research on  'modern' mental health systems in the Global South and their relationship with the wider social world. Informed by the politics, history and philosophy of psy disciplines, I examine the complexities and ambiguities of increasing metricalisation, technocratisation, globalization and scientifisation of mental health care. I grapple with questions of philosophical interest in mental health care like why mainstream mental health academia/research/ practice primarily engages in “mirroring” the world rather than in “world-making”. My monograph titled Mental Health and Critical Community Care: Perspectives from India is slated for publication by Routledge in 2025.

I encourage research broadly in the following areas: mental health in the context of gender, sexuality and relationship diversities, patient-centredness, chronic illnesses, politics of expertise, mental health interventions with minority/marginalised populations, community mental health and intersections in mental health all taking inter and multidisciplinary perspectives. I follow issues in public administration that affect life in general and human mentation in particular.

My work strives to contribute towards the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being

GOAL 5: Gender Equality

GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality

GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

Travelling, farming, reading literature and  spending time with pet dogs, cats  and tending to different forms of non-human life on our  natural farmland in the Western Ghats are sources of immense contemplation for me. 

RECENT PUBLICATION