Shilpi Rajpal

Shilpi Rajpal is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on the decolonization of psychiatry in India through transnational knowledge exchanges between Western and Indian mental health professionals during colonial and post-colonial periods.

Education:

• PhD in Modern Indian History

Dr. Rajpal investigates how Indian psychiatrists engaged with American, Soviet, and West European psychiatric models while Western researchers used India as a disciplinary site for mental health studies. Her work examines the role of international movements like psychoanalysis and mental hygiene in shaping transcultural psychiatry, positioning India as a critical node in global mental health knowledge production. She critically analyzes the formation of the Indian Psychiatric Society and its influence on psychiatric discourse.

Her publication record (2015-2023) reveals consistent thematic focus on colonial psychiatric institutions, with evolving emphasis from 19th-century asylum management to contemporary global mental health frameworks. The research demonstrates how colonial structures persist in modern mental healthcare while highlighting Indian practitioners' agency in reshaping psychiatric paradigms.

No scientific awards were documented in the provided profile.

Dr. Rajpal's research is conducted through the Centre for Culture and the Mind, where she contributes to interdisciplinary projects examining cultural dimensions of mental phenomena. Her work bridges historical scholarship with contemporary mental health policy debates without documented formal advisees or grant funding in the available materials.

She operates within Copenhagen's research ecosystem at Emil Holms Kanal 6, collaborating through the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies' frameworks for cultural and historical analysis of mental health systems.