Assistant Professor
Department of Department of Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology College of Arts, Culture, and Scientific Inquiry

678-839-0698
ngupta@westga.edu

Melson Hall - Room 205
Office Hours
By appointment

Nisha Gupta, Ph.D.

Nisha received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duquesne University, and her B.A. and M.A. in psychology and mental health counseling from New York University. Alongside her training as a psychotherapist, she experiments with integrating liberation psychology, hermeneutic phenomenological research, and the media arts to create therapeutic interventions for personal and sociocultural healing. She developed a "cinematic-phenomenological research method" that disseminates phenomenological research to the mainstream public as short films for the purpose of social advocacy; she received the 2020 Annual APA Division 5 Distinguished Dissertation Award in Qualitative Methods for this method. She is the founder of the Phenomenological Film Collective (PFCollective), a filmmaking-research group which trains students to utilize phenomenology as a method of filmmaking. Her projects as a researcher, artist, psychotherapist, and educator seek to disrupt cultures of silence, evoke empathy and compassion, initiate dialogue, and build solidarity across difference. Prior to her career in psychology, she worked in the advertising industry in NYC for Saatchi & Saatchi NY and BBDO Worldwide, helping to produce TV commercials.

  • B.S., Psychology and Communications, New York University, 2006
  • MA, Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness, New York University, 2012
  • Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, Duquesne University, 2018

Fall 2020 Sections

  • PSYC-2010 (Psychology as a Human Science) Section: E01
  • PSYC-4350 (Culture and Psychology) Section: E01
  • PSYC-7810A (Explorations into Creativity) Section: E01

Summer 2020 Sections

Spring 2020 Sections

Fall 2019 Sections

  • PSYC-4350 (Culture and Psychology) Section: E02
  • PSYC-4350 (Culture and Psychology) Section: 01 Download Syllabus [PDF]
  • PSYC-6899 (Assimilation 1st & 2nd Gen Imm) Section: 09

Summer 2019 Sections

  • PSYC-3730 (Social Psychology) Section: E02
  • PSYC-4010 (Theories of Psychology) Section: E01
  • PSYC-6899 (Buber and Subculture) Section: 02

Spring 2019 Sections

Fall 2018 Sections

  • PSYC-4350 (Culture and Psychology) Section: 03
  • PSYC-5500 (Explorations into Creativity) Section: 01
  • PSYC-7810F (Tutorial: Film & Psychology) Section: 01

Gupta, N. (2020). Singing away the social distancing blues: Art therapy in a time of coronavirus. The Journal of Humanistic Psychology; Special issue on COVID-19. Onlinefirst.

Gupta, N, Simms, E., and Dougherty, A. (2019). Eyes on the street: Photovoice, liberation psychotherapy, and the emotional landscapes of urban children. Emotion, Space, and Society, 33.

Gupta, N. (2019). The phenomenological film collective: Introducing a cinematic-phenomenological research method for social advocacy filmmaking. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 13(4)

Gupta, N. (2018). Harnessing phenomenological research to facilitate conscientização about oppressive lived experience. The Journal of Humanistic Psychology; Special issue: Radical Humanism, Critical Consciousness, and Social Change. Onlinefirst.

Gupta, N. (2018). Stories of faith, stories of humanity: Fusing phenomenological research with digital storytelling to facilitate interfaith empathy. Qualitative Research in Psychology. DOI: 10.1080/14780887.2018.1442705

Gupta, N. (2017). Exploring the schizoid defense of the closet through the existential-phenomenology of R.D. Laing. The Journal of Humanistic Psychology. 5(2), 170-189.

Gupta, N. (2015). The cinematic chiasm: Evoking societal empathy through the phenomenological language of film. Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts, 14(2), 35-48.