Dr Sabah Siddiqui completed her PhD from the University of Manchester on faith healing practices, where she investigated how medical science and traditional/alternative medicine intersect in mental health service provision. She used methods from critical psychology, ethnography, and social geography. She also explored the place of fiction in social science methodologies through the trope of ghost stories. She was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester twice, in 2016 and 2018. Her work on faith healing has been published in the form of a book, chapters in edited volumes, and journal articles.
Dr Siddiqui has worked on the intersections of sex, gender, and power. She has worked as a research consultant and writer on topics such as gendered violence, domestic and sexual abuse, violence against women and girls with disabilities, and violence against women deemed mad. In 2018, she was one of the editors of the special issue for the Annual Review of Critical Psychology on Sex and Power in the University, which explored the questions of sexual harassment and violence in the university setting.
Dr Siddiqui is a psychodynamic psychotherapist, with a three-year MPhil in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from Ambedkar University Delhi. She brings together psychoanalytic insights from Freud, Lacan, Object Relations, and Group Analysis to inform her work. She co-edited the book Islamic Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Islam, which was nominated for the 2019 Gradiva Award for Best Edited Book. She is currently a member of the editorial boards of Psychoanalysis, Culture, & Society, and the Annual Review of Critical Psychology.
In 2023, she is working on the following research projects:
Community Mental Health in Maharashtra. She is the Principal Investigator for a project titled Whither ‘community’?, exploring community mental health within Adivasi society
Psychoanalytic Perspectives from South Asia. She is co-editing a special issue for the Journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society
Social movements and social change. She is co-editing a volume titled A People’s History of the Farmers’ Movement, 202-2021;
Psychology and sociology of religion. She is working on the Sikh Langar as an interaction of food and revolution in the Farmers’ Movement.
1) Siddiqui, S. (2022). Psychology in India: Knowledge, Method, Nation. In Mapping Scientific Method: Disciplinary Narrations (pp. 262-279). Routledge India.
2) Siddiqui, S. (2020). Faith healing: Haunted discourses of distress in India. In The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures (pp. 268-277). Routledge.
3) Siddiqui, S. (2019). Faith Healing at a Muslim Shrine in Gujarat, India: Exploring the Site, Subject, and Ghost. The University of Manchester (United Kingdom).
4) Siddiqui , S. (2019). Non-Legal Modes of Redressal of Violence. In Training Manual for Legal Empowerment of Women and Girls with Physical Disabilies in India. Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi.
5) Haq, S., & Siddiqui, S. (2018). Between neutrality and disavowal: Being Muslim psychotherapists in India. In Islamic Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Islam (pp. 60-69). Routledge.
6) Chandrashekar, K., Lacroix, K., & Siddiqui, S. (2018). Sex and power in the university. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 15, 3-14.
7) Siddiqui, S., & Davar, B. (2018). Devi Possession. Psychoanalysis from the Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood (pp. 19-36). Lexington Books.
8) Siddiqui, S. (2017). Ways of Doing: The Mind and the Brain. Breaking the silo: Integrated science education in India (pp. 262-272). Orient BlackSwan.
9) Siddiqui, S. (2016). Religion and psychoanalysis in India: Critical clinical practice. Routledge.
10) Lacroix, K., & Siddiqui, S. (2013). Cultures of Violence: A Woman without a Past or a Future. Economic & Political Weekly, 48(44), 69.”
PSYC491 Theories in Counselling Psychology: This course looks at the history, nature, structure, and development of the field of counseling psychology. It examines the conceptual framework of the various theories and approaches in the field.
PSYC401 Community Mental Health: This course explores the development of the sub-discipline of Community Psychology, and its unique model of mental health practice. It engenders an understanding of the types of mental health concerns that become visible in community life, and the effects of social processes and social change on individuals and groups.
PSYC320 Environment and Psyche: This course looks at interdisciplinary questions between Psychology and Environmental Studies, and methods for analysing different aspects of the human-environment relationships, including the production of space, which significantly impact environmental good as well as human wellbeing.
PSYC226 History and Systems of Psychology: Psychology is a discipline that explores and interrogates the psychological basis of being human, from behaviour to neurocognition, from consciousness to the unconscious, from the normal to the pathological, and from the individual to the social. This course will follow the history of ideas in the development of the field, especially at the paradigmatic moments that contributed to defining contemporary psychology.
PSYC207 Writing like a Psychologist: This course is designed to teach the fundamentals of writing scientific papers in Psychology. It will look at technical aspects including writing research proposals, reading published articles in peer-reviewed journals, journalistic pieces for public discourse, and writing fictional accounts of psychological experience.
PSYC206 Thinking like a Psychologist: This course introduces students to the many and often contrasting ways in which psychologists think about the mind and the brain, and will draw upon the various fields of study such as cognitive science, neuroscience, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis.
PSYC201 Introduction to Psychology: This course introduces students to basic concepts of General Psychology, including topics on perception, learning, memory, intelligence, motivation, emotion, and personality. It introduces students to some of the classic psychological studies and thereby demonstrates the principles of some of the key areas of modern psychology as a diverse and interdisciplinary science.
KCCS122 Exploring the Social and the Historical: This course is a conceptual exploration of two categories – the social and the historical. Such an exploration helps us to understand that what appears to be “natural” and “common-sensical” in today’s world are (a) social constructs, and (b) products of historical change.
