A Talk on ‘From Critique to Reconstruction: Contributions of Feminist Psychology to Research and Practice’

About the Talk

Psychology has travelled a long way from being labelled as ‘womanless’ to a fairly large body of knowledge that engages with the lives and experiences of a diverse range of participants including women and other genders and addresses issues that are of relevance to them. In this talk, beginning with an historical overview of the shifts of perspective regarding gender in psychology, I will elaborate on the contributions of feminist psychology and the ways in which it has expanded in the past five decades or so to illumine and inform psychological research and practice in gender-sensitive ways.

About the Speaker

U Vindhya was formerly with Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad campus as Professor of Psychology and Deputy Director. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships including the South Asian Visiting Scholarship (Oxford University); Fulbright Visiting Lectureship (University of Alabama, USA); and Visiting Professorships in Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary and University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is a past President of the National Academy of Psychology. Her research interests are located in the interface of psychology and feminism and have focused on gender and mental health, violence against women, trafficking, feminist counselling, and the psychological dynamics of women’s political activism. Her publications include Feminist Psychologies: Identities, Relations and Well-being in India (Routledge, 2024); Psychosocial Interventions for Social Issues in Contemporary India (Springer, 2025); and the co-edited Handbook of International Feminisms: Perspectives on Psychology, Women, Culture and Rights (Springer) that won the 2012 Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology (USA).