Research 

My work in this area engages with how psychological life is shaped through cultural meanings, historical inheritances, and embodied forms of knowledge. Drawing on postcolonial and psychoanalytic approaches, I explore how distress, healing, and subjectivity emerge at the intersection of ritual, belief, and affect. I am particularly interested in how non-clinical and non-Western forms of care disrupt dominant psychological paradigms.

Selected Publications:

• Faith healing at a Muslim shrine in Gujarat, India: Exploring the site, subject and ghost  — Sabah Siddiqui. PhD thesis submitted to the University of Manchester, 2019.
• Devi-Possession at the Intersections of Religion, Culture and Psychoanalysis — Sabah Siddiqui and Bhargavi Davar. In Psychoanalysis from the Indian Terroir, Lexington Books, 2018.
• Faith Healing in India: The Cultural Quotient of the Critical — Sabah Siddiqui, Kimberly Lacroix, and Anup Dhar. Published in Disability and the Global South, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2014.

I approach psychoanalysis as both a clinical practice and a cultural critique, particularly attentive to its afterlives in postcolonial contexts. My work traces how psychoanalytic thought travels, mutates, and finds meaning in South Asia—engaging with questions of religion, identity, and marginality. I am especially interested in developing regional and decolonial vocabularies for psychoanalytic inquiry.

Selected Publications:

• Psychoanalytic Perspectives from South Asia: Introduction to Special Issue — Edited by Shifa Haq, Sabah Siddiqui, and Rakesh Shukla. Published in Journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 2024.

• Islamic Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Islam — Edited by Ian Parker and Sabah Siddiqui. Routledge, 2018.

• Religion and Psychoanalysis in India: Critical Clinical Practice — Sabah Siddiqui. Routledge, 2016.

My work in this area brings together research and activism to foreground the voices and experiences of marginalized communities. Through collaborative writing and grounded inquiry, this body of work is on documenting dissent, reclaiming people’s histories, and challenging dominant frameworks of power and legitimacy.

Selected Publications:

• Loh Langar Tapde Rahen: Revolution and Food in the Farmers’ Movement — Sabah Siddiqui and Sarabjeet Dhody Natesan. In A People’s History of the Farmers’ Movement, Routledge, 2024.

• Why Do We Need a People’s History of the Farmers’ Movement? — Shamsher Singh and Sabah Siddiqui. In A People’s History of the Farmers’ Movement, Routledge, 2024.

• The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Rural Sanitation Workers in Haryana — Shamsher Singh and Sabah Siddiqui. Published in Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2023.

• Non-Legal Modes of Redressal of Violence — Sabah Siddiqui. In Training Manual for Legal Empowerment of Women and Girls with Physical Disabilities in India, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, 2019.

• Editorial: Sex and Power in the University — Karuna Chandrashekar, Kimberly Lacroix, and Sabah Siddiqui. Published in Annual Review of Critical Psychology, Issue 15, 2018.

This strand of my work examines how knowledge is produced, taught, and legitimized within the sciences, particularly psychology, in India. I am interested in the pedagogical and political stakes of method, and in how disciplinary boundaries are both enforced and disrupted.

Selected Publications:

• Psychology in India: Knowledge, Method, Nation — Sabah Siddiqui. In Mapping Disciplinary Debates: Scientific Method and Its Discontents, Routledge, 2022.
• Ways of Doing: Brain and Mind — Sabah Siddiqui. In Breaking the Silo: Integrated Science Education in India, Orient Blackswan, 2017.
• Ways of Knowing: Psychological Method — Sabah Siddiqui. In Breaking the Silo: Integrated Science Education in India, Orient Blackswan, 2017.