Nisha Sajnani
Arts Academia/Research Media Arts Theatre Visual Arts Person
"Nisha Sajnani, Ph.D., RDT, is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and registered drama therapist. She has over fifteen years of experience in facilitation, program research, and design within private and public agencies addressing a broad range of social policy and advocacy issues (racism, poverty, immigration, youth engagement, social cohesion, gender equity, violence prevention, education, and governance). She has extensive experience with arts-based and collaborative approaches to group learning and facilitation.
Nisha also brings expertise in trauma and its effects on human systems as well as particular interests in improvisation, creativity, interdependence, transformatiive pedagogies, and arts-based research.
Nisha is the director of the Drama Therapy, Community Health, and Prevention program at the Post Traumatic Stress Center in New Haven, CT and is on faculty at the Institutes for the Arts in Psychotherapy (NYC) and at New York University where she teaches a course on Arts-Based Research. Nisha is also on faculty in the Humanities and Theatre department at Yale University where she teaches a course on Applied Theater, Trauma, and Cultural Intervention. She is currently a participant in the Global Mental Health Trauma and Recovery Program with the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma. Nisha is the President-Elect of the National Association for Drama Therapy. "