Meenal Rawat
Thesis title: Ritual Healing and Mental Distress in Himalayan region of India
PhD supervisors:
Background
I am an interdisciplinary scholar currently pursuing my PhD in South Asian Studies. I hold a master's degree in Public Policy and have experience of working with community mental health projects in India.
Qualifications
2022- present: PhD (South Asian Studies), University of Edinburgh
2019: M.A. Public Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Science, India
2017: B.A. Political Science, Delhi University
Undergraduate teaching
2023: Tutor for course “Working and Relating: Developing your people skills” at University of Edinburgh
Current research interests
My PhD project explores the intersection of ritual healing practices and social identities in relation to the mental health of people living in low-resource settings. The study is based in the western Himalayan state of India i.e. Uttarakhand, where I have spent much of my life. I employ auto-ethnography in my work with people from the same tribal community as mine, as a methodological approach. I also hope to contribute to the decolonization of anthropology as well as social science research by incorporating personal narratives into scholarly discourse, using principles of reflexivity and positionality.Current project grants
College of Arts and Humanities PhD award (2022-2025)
Awarded School of Social and Political Science PhD Scholarship (2022; declined)
Field work grant, Mariwala Health Initiative, India (2023)
Past project grants
Conference presentation, Second International CHW Symposium, Bangladesh (2019)
Conference details
2023: 19th IUAES-WAU World Anthropology Congress 2023, held in New Delhi, India
2022: 17th World Conference on Public Health, held in Rome, Italy.
2019: Second International CHW Symposium, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
2019: COPASAH Global Symposium on Citizenship, Governance and Accountability in Health. New Delhi, India. October 2019
Participant
(2023): Health in South Asia, jointly organized by the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology (EdCMA) and the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS)
(2023): Operationalizing Social & Structural Determinants of Mental Health in India: Research and Practice, supported by the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology and the Social Work subject area, the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, and the Mariwala Health Initiative, Mumbai, India.
Papers delivered
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Mathias K, Rawat M, Thompson A, Gaitonde R, Jain S. (2022). Exploring community mental health systems; a participatory health needs and assets assessment in the Yamuna valley, North India. International J Health Policy Management. 2020; x(x), 1-10.
Mathias, K, Rawat M, Philip, S. et al. (2020). “We’ve got through hard times before”: acute mental distress and coping among disadvantaged groups during COVID-19 lockdown in North India - a qualitative study. Int J Equity Health. 19. 224 (2020).
Rawat M, Bayetti C, Jadhav S, Mathais K. (2021). A cross-sectional study to explore various meanings of mental distress and help seeking in the Yamuna Valley, North India. Indian J Soc Psychiatry. 37 (2021).
Pillai P, Rawat M, Jain S, et al. (2023). Developing relevant community mental health programmes in North India: five questions we ask when co-producing knowledge with experts by experience. BMJ Global Health 2023;8: e011671.
Mathias K, Bunkley N, Pillai P, Ae-Ngibise KA, Kpobi L, et al. (2024). Inverting the deficit model in global mental health: An examination of strengths and assets of community mental health care in Ghana, India, Occupied Palestinian territories, and South Africa. PLOS Global Public Health 4(3): e0002575. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0002575
NON-PEER REVIEWED ARTICLE/ OTHER ARTICLES ONLINE
Sapra I, Rawat M. Mental health in the wake of COVID-19: Existing initiative and recommendations. Tata Institute of Social Sciences. 2022
Mathias K, Rawat M. Communities and knowledge production. International Health Policy. 2021
Mathias K, Rawat M, Pillai P. Resilient practices for mental health in rural and urban India. Reframe 2020. The Mariwala Health Initiative Journal.