Dr Nandini Manjunath is a Lecturer in Arts Therapies and Play Therapy in the Occupational Therapy and Arts Therapies division.
- Overview
- Research Interests
- Research Publications
- Teaching & Learning
- Activities & Awards
I am a Registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist, Trauma therapist and a Choreographer and hold a Professional Doctorate in Psychotherapy and Counselling from the University of Edinburgh.
With an educational background in psychology and choreography from my undergraduate years, I am passionate about bringing the creative into the academic and bring all of my dancer, psychotherapist, social activist and researcher selves into the different spaces I reside and work in.
Aligning with my strong allegiance towards the Creative-Relational, Feminist, Post-qualitative and Critical deconstruction based research interests, my doctoral research project explored a De/Colonial praxis within New Materialisms and the methodology of Collective Biography as written through the lens of a multiply marginalised collective’s process of exploring our entanglements within patriarchal contexts.
As a dance educator and choreographer, I have worked in various artistic contexts in Edinburgh and Scotland and have been involved in multiple Arts-based research explorations creating and producing mixed media presentations and varied community based outreach activities.
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Affiliations/Memberships to Other Organisations:
Registered member of
Associate Fellow of
My primary experience is within arts-based and creative approaches in Social Science and Counselling and Psychotherapy research, building interdisciplinary collaboration and applied Social Science research, particularly Creative-relational, New Materialist and Decolonial approaches within participatory action, collaborative/co-created research contexts.
Active Research Interests:
- Arts-based research methods
- Decolonising methodologies
- Decolonising Counselling and Psychotherapy practice and research
- Explorations of gender and embodied subjectivities
- Movement and Choreographic practice within research
- Artistic practice as research
- Collaborative writing and co-creation of knowledge
- New Materialist
- Critical Posthuman research
Research Methods:
- Arts-Based Research
- Post-Qualitative Research
- Autoethnography
- Collective Biography
- Case Study research
- Phenomenological research
- Writing as Inquiry
- Poetic Inquiry
- Choreographic practice as research
During my doctoral studies, I gained extensive experience of delivering professional education (undergraduate and postgraduate) in the Counselling, Psychotherapy and Applied Social Sciences (CPASS) department at the University of Edinburgh.
Much of this work was focused within the Interpersonal Dialogue between the Person-centred and Psychodynamic frameworks and practice and research within Counselling and Psychotherapy.
In these roles I have facilitated groups supporting learning, led small group skills practice, offered dissertation supervision supervision for a MSc by research student and engaged in assessment and examination processes with positive feedback from the course organisers and students.
My two years of experience as a listening skills tutor is the PG certificate programme has particularly offered me the opportunity to be closely involved in Counselling training and in engaging, motivating, and facilitating students’ learning through relational engagement and team-work.
Further, as a practitioner of DMP, I have been a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Derby and The University of Edinburgh, designing and delivering online and in-person lectures about both DMP practice and research and also held the position of an Interpersonal Learning facilitator at the Queen Margaret University since September 2022 towards facilitating non-directive experiential groups for students of MSc Music therapy programme.
Dr Nandini currently teaches on the following courses at QMU:
- Play Therapy Dissertation
- Theory and Practice of Person-centred Health and Wellbeing
- Leading Person-centred Practice for Health and Wellbeing
