Dr Geetha Reddy

Professional biography

I am Geetha, a social, political, and cultural psychologist working on understanding how people make sense of colonisation, multiculturalism, and migration in contemporary societies. I am a member of the Readsurama Decolonial Editorial Collective (comprised of Prof Shahnaaz Suffla, Prof Kopano Ratele, Dr Nick Malherbe and Prof Glenn Adams and myself) and Principal Investigator of the British Academy funded EXCAPE-URMI Project and Open University Open Societal Challenges funded BUSSIN Project. I am part of a global academic movement that questions and disrupts Western psychological understanding of our social worlds. 

Research interests

My research takes an intersectional perspective on identities, highlighting the power structures that influence an individual's psychology. I speak and write about using a decolonial critical psychological paradigm in my research, teaching, and practice. I am especially interested in how social scientists can study and address social issues across disciplinary boundaries. My other research interests include perspective taking among individuals, the socio-cultural determinants of health related behaviour as well as safety culture within public health systems.

I am currently working on the OU Open Societal Challenge "Building Global South-South solidarities to redress inequalities (BUSSIN)". More information on the project can be found here.

Teaching interests

I work to decolonise psychology curriculums across a wide range of psy-disciplines. I am also part of the production and presentation teams of D110, D120, DE200, DD210, DD803 and D811.

I am interested in supervising transdisciplinary doctoral projects that take an anti-racist, anti-caste, decolonial and intersectional approach to addressing contemporary societal challenges. These projects should broadly include the themes of coloniality, precarity, racialisation, multiculturalism and migration.

External collaborations

I have edited three special issues on decolonial psychology with the Readsura Decolonial Issues Editorial Collective, the first of which has been published in the Review of General Psychology in December 2021. The second issue was published in March 2022 in the Journal of Social Issues. The third issue is out now in the same journal. I have also edited a special issue entitled "Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity" with Dr Clare Coultas and Dr Johanna Lukate for the British Journal of Social Psychology.