Graduate Associate
Doctoral Candidate
Graduate Programme in Social Work, York University
Research Keywords:
Participatory Action Research; mental health; youth
Research Region(s):
Pakistan, South Asia
Sania Bilwani is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work at York University. Sania is an Erasmus Mundus Scholar and has a European Master in Social Work with Families and Children. Her doctoral research explores how Pakistani youth conceptualize “mental health” and “mental distress” and the ways in which these conceptualizations reflect traditional and/or psychiatric onto-epistemologies and practices.
Her participatory action research adopts frameworks from the field of Mad studies, namely the conception of distress as complex process rooted in alternate realities and wandering nonhuman entities and a meaningful response to their intersectional experiences and socio-economic context. Her research foregrounds embodied, community-based and decolonial ways of knowing.