Akriti is a PhD candidate in Social Research Methods supervised by Dr Flora Cornish and Dr Sara Salem.

She began her journey towards this PhD with an academic background in MSc in Global Mental Health and work experience in survivor research. Her own experiences of mental distress and mental health services as well as the work of other users, survivors, and persons with psychosocial disabilities led her to critically re-examine what ‘madness’ meant. It is this knowledge and experiences that drive her work.

Akriti’s doctoral thesis explores the construction of ‘psychosocial disability’ as an identity and framework and its use in activism and advocacy in India. It seeks to understand the configurations of social movement(s) led by persons with psychosocial disability and the points of collaborations and contestations between the psychosocial disability movement(s) and the mainstream disability movement(s). Fundamental to this research enquiry, and her broader interests, are questions of injustice, of power imbalances, of oppression and exclusion, but also equally of resistance and solidarities, of inclusive movement-building, and of creating communities and practices of care.

Akriti is also a research fellow at the Center for Mental Health, Human Rights, and Social Justice based in the University of Essex.