Akriti Mehta

Dr Akriti Mehta is a "Mad/disabled researcher and organiser" with experience in community, academic, and activist knowledge production.

Currently, she is the co-director of Mad Thinking, an initiative which strives to build spaces for connection, critical reflection, and shared political learning within disability movements and beyond, especially in global South contexts.

She has a PhD in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK). Her research focuses on how multiply marginalised psychosocial disability activists in India conceptualise and mobilise ‘psychosocial disability’ in intersectional and radical ways. She is also part of collectives focused on disability justice, anti-racism, and queer activism in the UK and in India.

Her work and interests are centred around: (1) building links between different activist spaces and social movements; (2) supporting and strengthening disability activisms which challenge ableism as well as capitalism, fascism, militarisation, imperialism, and other systems of oppression; and (3) mapping means and methods of resistance aimed at radical systemic change on a global scale while simultaneously creating local communities and systems rooted in a politics of abolition, collective care, and justice.

Key expertise: Psychosocial disability, disability movements, Mad/disabled knowledges

Mehta, A. (2025). Doing Hope in the Ruins. Mad Thinking.

Mehta, A. (2025). How Authoritarianism and Neoliberalism Work Together to Depoliticise Disability Movements. Mad Thinking.

Mehta, A. (2024). The radical potential of psychosocial disability activism in the global South In N. Lieketseng, M. R. Velarde, S. Singh, L. Swartz, & K. Soldatic (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Disability and Global Health (pp. 47-59). Routledge.

Lee, Y.Y., Buyanda, M., Mehta, A., Omowunmi, O.A., Ryan, G., Sunkel, C., Vasquez, A., & Jones, N. (2023). Cracks that let the Light In: Collective Reflections on Integrating Lived Experience of Psychosis in Research and Policy in the Context of a Global Commission. Community Mental Health Journal, 59(5): 819-825. DOI: 10.1007/s10597-023-01118-w

Florence, A.C., Mehta, A. & Jones, N. (2022). Special Series Introduction: Activist & Community Perspectives on Mental Health/Psychosocial Disability from the Global South. Community Mental Health Journal, 58(5):821-823. DOI: 10.1007/s10597-022-00959-1

Cosgrove, L., Mills, C., Amsterdam, J., Heath, I., Mehta, A., Kalathil, J. & Shaughnessy, A. (2019). Global Mental Health: Correspondence. The Lancet., 394(10193):117-118. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)30945-6

Cosgrove, L., Mills, C., Karter, J., Mehta, A. & Kalathil, J. (2019). A critical review of the Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development: Time for a paradigm shift. Critical Public Health. 30(5):624-631. DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2019.1667488

Mehta, A. (2018).A Tale of Two Conferences: The disconnect between Global Mental Health and its discontents. Mad in Asia.

Mehta, A. (2018). A response to the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development Goals. Transforming Communities for Inclusion- Asia Pacific