Introduction
Swathi Priya is a counselling psychologist and a psychological researcher. She holds a master’s degree in Social Work from Madras Christian College, Chennai, graduated in 2012 and a Master of Science degree in Research Methods in Psychology from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom, graduated in 2020. Her main research interest covers social and personality psychology, in particular nostalgia, meaning in life and third person perspective. She is also interested in developing psychological measurement.
In addition, understanding individuals from multiple perspectives, sharpness and spontaneity in delivering sustained and generative changes are her unique capabilities that she has sharpened over 7 years of change work practice prior to her research methods degree.
In 2012, she started as a Research Associate where she studied the impact of the 3 year research project on Ageing, Poverty and Neoliberalism in Urban South India (2007-10). It was a study on the impact of globalisation on urban poverty and the elderly in Chennai conducted by the Birkbeck College, University of London, and Center for Law, Policy and Human Rights studies, Chennai.
Later, with keen interest to understand why people do what they do, she learnt Counselling Psychology in Christian Counselling Centre, Vellore and Neuro Linguistic Programming in School of Excellence, Chennai, who is a pioneer in the field of Human Engineering. In 2014 she joined School of Excellence to engage in intense change practice and research on a new technology in behavioral change work called the Conversational Programming and Excellence Installation. During this period, she helped many individuals across the country grow in different aspects of their life such business, career, relationship, health and finance by making specific behavioral changes.
In 2017, she pursued her career as a de-addiction counsellor at TT Ranganathan Clinical Research Foundation, Chennai, where she counselled the patients to attain sobriety and the families to understand the science behind addiction and their role as a support system. She was also a trainer at Regional Resource Training Centre, South Zone, sponsored by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, New Delhi and trained over 100 budding counsellors and nurses on de-addiction counselling.
She has been associated with Kumaraguru institutions since 2018. She was the Assistant Manager of the Department of Communications and Special Projects that focused on leadership building and emotional wellbeing of students. She was an adjunct faculty at the Department of Psychology and Social Work for a short period. Later, in 2019 she went on to pursue research method degree. Through her academic and professional journey, she has had the opportunity to travel to the Andaman Islands, USA, Sri Lanka, Spain, Thailand and UK for academic and training purposes. This greatly adds to her diversity in thoughts, she says.