Dr Nandini Manjunath

Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy

Biography

Background

Nandini Manjunath is a Registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist, trauma therapist, and choreographer. Her work sits at the intersection of psychotherapy, embodiment, and creative practice, and she is committed to bringing relational, experiential, and critically reflective approaches into teaching and research.

With a background in the arts and the community sectors, she is passionate about integrating the creative into academic and therapeutic spaces. She brings her dancer, psychotherapist, social activist, and researcher selves into her teaching practice, facilitating learning environments that are dialogical, embodied, and ethically attentive. Her teaching spans counselling and psychotherapy training, with particular interests in interpersonal process, De/Colonial praxis, relational depth, identity, power, and critical inquiry.

Alongside her academic role, she is Co-Lead of the Arts-based Research and Choreography Division at Theiyā Arts, where she develops interdisciplinary and community-rooted projects that bridge performance, research, and social engagement. Her work across therapeutic, educational, and artistic contexts is grounded in creative-relational, feminist, and deconstructive approaches.

Qualifications

Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy

Professional Doctorate in Counselling and Psychotherapy, University of Edinburgh

Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling (Interpersonal Dialogue), with Distinction, The University of Edinburgh/COSCA

Master of Arts in Dance Movement Psychotherapy, University of Derby

Bachelor of Science in Psychology, University of Madras

Bachelor of Arts in Choreography and Arts History, Bangalore University

Responsibilities & affiliations

Registered Member, Association of Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK

Postgraduate teaching

Postgraduate Certificate in Counselling Studies

  • Self, Other and Society 
  • Ethics, Boundaries and Supervision

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Research summary

Dr Nandini Manjunath’s research sits at the intersection of counselling and psychotherapy, embodied knowledge production, and creative practice. Her current work is grounded in creative-relational inquiry and focuses on how embodied, experiential, and interpersonal learning processes (including collaborative practice and relational depth) can support ethically attentive teaching, supervision, and therapeutic training. She is particularly interested in arts-based and movement-informed approaches to knowledge-making, and in community-rooted, interdisciplinary, mixed-media practices that bridge performance and research.

Her research is shaped by feminist, de/colonial, and critically reflective praxis, and draws on new materialisms and post-qualitative methodologies to explore how realities come into being through relational, cultural, and socio-political entanglements. Her work attends to gendered identities, race, and intergenerational trauma, with an ongoing commitment to research that is accountable to marginalised and misrepresented communities.

Her past research developed a de/colonial praxis within new materialisms through Collective Biography, examining patriarchal contexts, resistance, and the ethical dilemmas of collaborative inquiry, particularly around representation and interpretation within Western academic settings.

Current research interests

Creative-relational inquiry in counselling and psychotherapy education and practice Embodied, experiential, and interpersonal learning processes (collaborative practice; relational depth) Arts-based and movement-informed approaches to therapeutic practice, supervision, and training Feminist, de/colonial, and critically reflective praxis in research and pedagogy Community-rooted, interdisciplinary, mixed-media approaches that bridge performance and research New-materialisms and Post-Qualitative methodologies Gendered identities, Race and Intergenerational Trauma

Past research interests

De/Colonial praxis New-materialisms Collective Biography as methodology for exploring marginalised collective experience Patriarchal contexts, entanglements, resistance, and the ethics of collaborative inquiry Post-qualitative and critical deconstruction-based research approaches

Knowledge exchange

Producing mixed-media and movement-based outputs that translate research into accessible, embodied forms of engagement Creative-Academic knowledge exchange: arts/academia co-production models and toolkits that enable collaborative, interdisciplinary knowledge-sharing across research, practice, and community contexts

Contributing to interdisciplinary research collaborations (e.g., with CBSS) that connect psychotherapy, culture, and arts-based inquiry

Supporting community-facing and practice-facing engagement through arts-based research approaches, outreach activity, and creative dissemination

Developing ethically attentive research practice that foregrounds relational decoloniality, context, and care within Western academic settings

Affiliated research centres

Project activity

In Development - Creative-Relational Explorations of Everyday Feminisms, Reproductive Health, and Arts-Led Methodologies, a collaborative project working across academic, community, and artistic contexts. This research seeks to build and test a framework for creative-academic encounters that bring together practitioners, researchers, and community stakeholders in order to co-produce new methodological tools. Through multidisciplinary encounters, experimental hubs, and the development of a publicly accessible toolkit, the project investigates how creative practice can meaningfully intervene in discussions of reproductive health, everyday feminisms, and structural inequalities.

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