Mridula Sridhar

Thesis title: Healing beyond colonial fragmentation: Towards psychotherapeutic alterity

Research summary

Rooted in the cultural context of modernity, modern psychotherapy carries inherent assumptions that shape and sustain it—assumptions my work seeks to challenge. I explore how psychotherapy maintains (or fails to address) modernity’s fragmentations such as atomism, individualism, instrumental rationality, alienation, meaninglessness, and disconnection. I further challenge its claim to universality, recognising how that reinforces a colonial framework. Drawing on my cultural particularity, I ask: How can we re-conceptualise health, mental health and its expression, and healing from a non-modern perspective? How do we understand the self? How do we understand relationality? What are the implications for counselling and psychotherapy? My approach draws on decolonial scholarship, relational psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, critical imperial history, philosophical non-dualism, and my practice of Carnatic music alongside generational knowledge.

Research blog: https://iyakkam.substack.com/about

 

Publications:

"Modern Psychology and its Colonial Legacy" published on Mad in America (2024): https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/12/modern-psychology-and-its-colonial-legacy/

Current project grants

Principal's Teaching Award Scheme with Dr. Karen Serra Undurraga and Dr. Candela Sanchez
Fostering Dialogue Across Racial Differences: A Pilot Study: The project explores dialogical interracial culture circles as an innovative pedagogical approach to fostering racial equity in higher education. By engaging undergraduate students in participatory, student-led discussions, the study examines how dialogue, experiential activities, and collective reflection can enhance critical awareness of racial dynamics in learning environments and inform more sensitive teaching practices.

Papers delivered

European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry 2025

  • "Being Brown and Not-Brown: Reclaiming Subjectivity in Resistance"
  • "Meeting and Holding a Gaze as Collaborative Writing's Precondition" with co-presenters Dr Fiona Murray and Dr Edgar Rodríguez-Dorans 
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