About Dr. Pandit
Two decades of expertise and diverse experience in domains of Psychology.
Shilpa Pandit is a trained Psychologist and a Development Professional with a Ph.D. in health in school contexts, and more than a decade of research work experience in different domains of social and human development. On her more than two-decade long adventure has primarily identified herself as a researcher as it resonates with her being.
Working as researcher has meant that she has never viewed work as dichotomous in terms of personal and professional, philosophical and applied, primitive and modern, social and individual, thought and action and other such contrivances even while recognizing the distinctions between them.
During her work of 23 years, she has alternatively wandered and worked – as a pilgrim and an exile in three distinct yet linked actions.
Social Psychology | Introduction to Psychology | Positive Psychology
Shilpa teaches social psychology, research methods and health psychology; She has been teaching as an Associate Professor in Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, Kochi.
She helped set up the postgraduate program in Psychology and also launched the Ph.D. program at CVV. At CVV, she helped set up courses such as yoga and meditation in integration with health psychology, nutrition and health in psychology and psychology and law.
Earlier, she has taught research methods – especially, qualitative methods and mixed methods in RGNIYD (Rajiv Gandhi National Institute for Youth Development, Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu) and BALM’s post-graduate programme with TISS (Banyan Institute for Leadership in Mental Health).
Recently, in 2019, she was the only psychologist to create and take a course on Psychology and Public Policy, for Indian School of Public Policy, New Delhi (Faculty – ISPP) for a postgraduate programme.
Consulting on the issues such as poverty and livelihoods, health and gender, youth and adolescent engagement with work etc. In that reference, she has associated with several organizations- UNICEF, UNDP, IFMR, MSSRF and SIAAP, and KHPT.
As a seeker of the sacred, she has researched on the insights from Indian Darśana-s – Advaita and ViśiṣtādvaitaVedānta, KāśmirŚaiva thought and yoga-sāmkhya. Reviewing concepts and theories emanating thereof, on the way, papers on self, yoga and meditation and rasa theory have been published.
A book manuscript on music, immersion and meditation states.
A research study on meditators, using micro-phenomenology under advanced discussion for both the design issues and the selection of the participants.
Collaboration with community organizations for creating a capacity-building program for lay counselors for community health, including community mental health among tribal districts in Maharashtra.
She along with a few friends, co-founded an organization/NGO-DreamPath Foundation (DreamPath Foundation). DreamPath Foundation is based out of Bengaluru and works with adolescents and youth on work and careers. As of 2020, DreamPath Foundation in it’s 5 years of journey has 15 members in the team, and has reached out to more than 15000 students in 50+ schools in Karnataka through its workshops and a dedicated career helpline. Currently, she is trying to build a team for another social enterprise to addressing mental health issues in India.
Earlier, Shilpa worked as UNDP Research officer, on public policy relating to rural employment from 2014-2016, with the Ministry of Rural Development. During this time, she visited 10 states and about 40 districts for her field visits. She was part of research review of the MoRD programs-esp. MGNREGA. She is still active on issues relating to social accountability of public service delivery.
Shilpa was also the Head of Monitoring and Evaluation, Hand in Hand (India), from 2016 to 2018 with a team of 11 members, where M&E routinely commissioned research evaluations for funded projects on women empowerment, health, education and skills in rural Tamil Nadu and some project areas in rural Madhya Pradesh.
The team also conducted scoping studies, midline evaluations and set and monitored the results framework for all internal projects. One of the highlights of her work was that her team transitioned to tablets for their research work, reducing data collection, entry and validation time and improving the quality of data. She was also a SPoC for CSR funded project to create an online market eco-system for rural women entrepreneurs.
In 2018, Shilpa was selected for the Chevening Fellowship (CRISP) at the University of Oxford, UK, for her leadership in the social sector.