Jill Sanghvi is a mental health practitioner who currently resides with her family in Mumbai, India. She received a Ph. D. in Psychology from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and her research explores and brings forward voices of autistic young people in India. Jill has a Masters in Applied Psychology from Mumbai University and a Masters in Mental Health Counseling from Pace University, New York. 

Jill came together with a group of like-minded colleagues to co-create Narrative Practices India Collective in 2020, with the hope of exploring narrative practices in diverse spaces through conceptualizing and facilitating trainings and collective programs in collaboration with communities, therapists, and educators working in the field of mental health. She has co-founded Happie World in 2014, a leisure and fun space for disabled young people. Jill has also been a part of Ummeed Child Development Center since 2009, where she currently works as a supervisor. 

Jill has always been interested in people’s stories and loves to witness the sparkle in people’s eyes and voices when they speak about their hopes and dreams. She has been drawn towards narrative ideas and practices in her work and holds a stance of social justice and a hope to nurture preferred ways of being when she collaborates with communities, groups and individuals in therapeutic conversations.  

Jill teaches in various mental health training programs in India with the intention to make visible the role of oppressive structures in maintaining problems in the lives of people and communities and nurturing collective accountability with the participants in the training programs. She has a particular interest in communities in the local context and has been actively engaging with community workers in conversations about mental health since 2014. She is also a visiting faculty at the UDAP, Mumbai University since 2022 where she guides students to conduct research from the social constructionist lens. 

Jill has published articles about her work with children and families with developmental disabilities in Indian journals and has been invited to speak about her work at several national and international conferences. She hopes to collaborate with more young people in the disability space and write about deconstructing the disability experience, centering voices of self-advocates and challenging ideas of ableism and other oppressive systemic discourses.