Arita Balaram

Arita Balaram is pursuing a PhD in the Critical Social Psychology program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is interested in stories that circulate within diasporic communities, across migratory geographies, and through generations. Her current research integrates visual methodologies such as identity mapping to explore how Indo-Caribbean youth in the U.S. engage in acts of self-assertion and recovery in contexts where ideas of home, belonging, and community have been contested for generations. More broadly, she is interested in the utility of psychological theory for doing community-building and critical consciousness-raising work.