With two awards this summer, Dr. Nisha Sajnani, associate professor of drama therapy in Lesley University’s Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences, was honored for her advocacy for women and contributions to her field.
Dr. Sajnani, the program director for Global Interdisciplinary Studies, received the Corann Okorodudu Global Women’s Advocacy Award from the Society for the Psychology of Women (Division 35) of the American Psychological Association. The award recognizes recipients’ efforts to advance psychological understanding of gender and to advocate for the mental health of women and girls around the globe.
Sajnani says she’s particularly honored to win the advocacy award in part because of the importance of the woman it is named after.
“Like you, I have sought to put human rights at the center of my efforts as an academic, educator, clinician and artist,” Sajnani wrote to Okorodudu, a professor emerita of psychology and Africana studies at New Jersey’s Rowan University and the founding chair of the psychology coalition of accredited NGOs at the United Nations. “My personal experience as the daughter of refugees from Pakistan, graduate education in drama therapy — a profession that combines rigorous training in both counseling psychology and theater — interdisciplinary doctoral studies, combined with two decades of working with nongovernmental organizations committed to eradicating gender-based violence, has given me a unique perspective on the relationship between creativity, education, psychological health and sustainable development.”
Sajnani says her work with the South Asian Women’s Community Center, Action des Femmes Handicapées (an advocacy center for women with disabilities) and the Girls Action Foundation in Montreal exposed her to ways in which systemic and interpersonal violence intersect differently in the lives of racialized, trans, cisgendered, Indigenous, and newcomer girls and women. She also noticed that the arts and social media were used to break down stereotypes, find community, and challenge inequality through what one young woman she worked with called “radical acts of self-representation."
“I responded to these observations in several ways,” Sajnani says. “In my role as a drama therapist, I worked with women to shape and tell their stories through the art of theater. As a community organizer, I worked with the Girls Action Foundation to co-create Amplify, "a national training on the design and facilitation of gender sensitive programs from a social justice perspective” now in its tenth year with a reach to 150 people leading programs in a network representing over 60,000 girls and young women across Canada. Sajnani is currently leading a participatory evaluation of the impact of the program over the last decade with Amplify alumni serving as co-researchers.
The Corann Okorodudu Award, which was presented this month at the APA conference in Denver follows notification of the North American Drama Therapy Association Research Award which will be presented to Sajnani in October in recognition of her work as editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Drama Therapy Review. She will share this award with associate editors Christine Mayor and Meredith Dean.
In the words of association President-elect Laura Wood, the award recognizes “dedication demonstrated through editing, mentorship” and the journal staff’s “own identities as writers and researchers (which) have improved our community.”
According to Sajnani, since its launch in 2014, Drama Therapy Review has emerged as an influential international forum for drama therapists, theater artists and educators interested in the relationship between drama, theater and wellbeing.
In 2015, Sajnani won the North American Drama Therapy Association’s Raymond Jacobs Memorial Diversity Award.