Feryl Badiani

The Puzzle of Hinduism: Understanding the polytheistic existence of Hinduism from a cultural evolutionary lens.

Feryl Badiani profile-picture photograph

Feryl Badiani

PhD Student
School of Psychology

Profile

Feryl completed her MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her master's thesis focused on understanding how people navigate contrary knowledge-systems stemming from religion and secularism about menstruation. She is now concerned with understanding how Hinduism continues to survive, despite the drop in popularity of other polytheistic religions. This investigation is focused on two Indian-linguistic communities: the Gujaratis and the Maharashtrians, with a theory that the practice of Hinduism uniquely evolves in each community to match their socio-economic niches. These communities are put in focus because of her Gujarati upbringing in the Maharashtrian state of India. Overall, she is concerned with the representation of Hinduism in Western psychology, and endeavours to present a more holistic representation of the religion.

Qualifications

B.A in Psychology, Sophia College for Women - Mumbai, India; MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology, London School of Economics - London, UK.

Research Interests

Religion, cognitive science of religion, norms, morality, Hinduism, cross-cultural psychology.

PhD topic

The Puzzle of Hinduism: Understanding the polytheistic existence of Hinduism from a cultural evolutionary lens.

Supervisor:

Dr Rita McNamara, School of Psychology

Dr Aiyana Willard, School of Psychology, Brunel University, London

Publications

Badiani, F., Willard, A., & McNamara, R. (2023). Bleeding Cultures A cross-cultural exploration into the behavioral outcomes of tight and loose cultural contact zones. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 100128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2023.100128

Karandikar, S., Kapoor, H., Diwakar, S., & Badiani, F. (2020). She did it her way: An analysis of female rebellion in contemporary Bollywood movies. South Asian Popular Culture, 19(2).

Badiani, F; Karia, S and Sousa, A. D. (2017). “A survey on the attitudes of psychology students towards the use of animals in medical research.” International Journal of Applied Research (IJAR), 7(10), 154-155. https://doi.org/10.36106/ijar. (ISSN: 2249-555X)

Badiani, F and Sousa, A. D. (2017) “Animal Assisted Therapy: an overview.” In Thakur, M and Sousa A. D. (Eds.), Current Topics in Psychology Vol. 1 (Vol.1, pp.186-195). Sarabook Publication. (ISSN: 978-1-73040-250-0)

Badiani, F and Sousa, A. D. (2016). “The Empty Nest Syndrome: Critical Clinical Considerations.” Indian Journal of Mental Health (IJMH), 3(2), 135-142. https://doi.org/10.30877ijmh.3.2.2016.135-142. (Online ISSN: 2394-6652)

Labs

Mind in Context lab

Centre for Applied Cross Cultural Research