Abstract: In her talk, Meghna will present reflections from her field notes as she navigates the ethics of conducting sensitive qualitative research with vulnerable adolescents in urban India. The talk will focus on grounding these reflections in child rights theory, violence exposure and paediatric research evidence, and real-world solutions and strategies generated through an iterative process that helped shape her doctoral research so far. She will also briefly present findings from her recently published qualitative synthesis on adolescents’ experiences of growing up in the context of parental intimate partner violence, while highlighting the importance of striking a balance between children’s protection and participation rights, as well as of promoting adolescent-first, agentic and safe research with vulnerable populations.
About the speaker: Meghna Achar (she/her) is an RCI-licenced clinical psychologist and a doctoral research scholar at St. John's Research Institute, Bengaluru. She completed her Master’s in Psychology (Clinical) at Christ (Deemed to be University) and her MPhil (Clinical Psychology) at NIMHANS. As a mental health professional and researcher, her interests revolve around mixed-methods and qualitative explorations in the domains of youth mental health and gender-based violence. She is interested to know how young persons in adversity respond, cope, seek help, and achieve resilient outcomes, which greatly influences her choice of adopting an intersectional, strengths-based paradigm in her current work. Her research on the coming out experiences of self-identified queer youth in urban India, online mental health peer support forums for Indian youth, and adolescent exposure to parental intimate partner violence are published in reputed journal and are available to read online.