Nisha Sajnani
Nisha Sajnani, PhD, RDT-BCT is an Associate Professor and Director of the NYU Steinhardt Graduate Program in Drama Therapy and Theatre and Health Lab, Principal Editor of Drama Therapy Review, founder of the Arts + Health at NYU, and visiting faculty with the Harvard Program In Refugee Trauma (HPRT). Dr. Sajnani is a co-founder and co-director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab established in collaboration with the WHO to advance research and policy on the physical, mental, and social health benefits of the arts. Her performance and curatorial practice reflects concerns with memory, placemaking, and migration while her areas of research include the role of drama therapy in supporting actor wellbeing which was piloted at NYU Tisch, racial bias in healthcare, and drama therapy and rehabilitation for adults with Parkinson’s Disease. She co-leads a WHO Commission on Arts Practice and the Ethics of Care.
Recent publications include a co-edited ebook on the psychological and physiological benefits of the arts which was among the top 20 most downloaded ebooks of 2022, a co-authored book entitled Intercultural Dramatherapy: Imagination and Action at the Intersections of Difference, a Howlround article on teaching theater in times of crisis, a special issue of Arts in Psychotherapy on intersectionality and the ethics of care, the first WHO policy concerning the role of the arts with forcibly displaced persons. An award-winning author, educator, and artist, her body of work explores the unique ways in which aesthetic experience can inspire equity, care, and collective human flourishing across the lifespan.
