Sudarshan R Kottai ([email protected], [email protected])

Sudarshan R Kottai (he/they) serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad and as a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi. Trained as a clinical psychologist, his research is broadly focused on modernising mental health systems in the Global South and their relationship with the wider social world. They grapple with questions of philosophical interest in mental health care like why mainstream mental health academia/research/ practice primarily engages in “mirroring” the world rather than in “world-making”. As a queer mental health researcher, “ethic of care” and “epistemic justice” heavily guide his work in approaching mental distress giving people the “permission to narrate” so that voices from the margins are amplified, listened to and heard. They draw from extensive firsthand knowledge and experience of the social, psychological, and emotional pressures and fatal vulnerabilities placed on members of the queer/trans/LGBTQIA+ community and is committed to fostering therapeutic relationships sensitive to human diversity, including queer-trans, gender-expansive, and non-binary people in their intersectional, affirmative mental health care.

They encourage research broadly in the following areas: mental health in the context of gender, sexuality and relationship diversities, patient-centredness, chronic illnesses, politics of expertise, mental health interventions with minority/marginalised populations, community mental health and intersections in mental health all taking inter and multidisciplinary perspectives. Sudarshan’s research outcomes have found their way to SCOPUS-Indexed journals including Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Anthropology and Medicine, Medical Anthropology, Economic and Political Weekly and Community Development Journal. He is currently co-guest editor (along with Dr Sathya D, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of HSS, IIT Palakkad) of the special issue titled Crises, marginality and suffering: Revisiting socio-political and economic turmoil in South Asia to be published in History of Psychiatry in 2027/28. They follow issues in public administration that affect life in general and human mentation in particular leading to newspaper articles in The Hindu, The Indian Express and The Telegraph.

Sudarshan was the recipient of DAAD Bilateral Exchange of Academics Grant 2025 at the University of Munster, and Forum for Medical Ethics Society (FMES)-Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME) Award of Appreciation in the FMES-IJME Ethics Awards 2022-23 in Category 1- Advocates/Champions foregrounding lived experiences and contributing to ethical practices for rights-based mental health care. Sudarshan is the publishing partner of Human Library Denmark which will be held at IIT Palakkad in October 2026. His work broadly strives to contribute towards the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being

GOAL 5: Gender Equality

GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality

GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal