Nisha Sajnani, PhD

Nisha Sajnani (she/her) is an Associate Professor and Director of the NYU Steinhardt Graduate Program in Drama Therapy, Chair of the NYU Creative Arts Therapies Consortium, and Founder of Arts & Health @ NYU. Other faculty appointments include NYU Abu Dhabi, where she developed the trans-disciplinary course Can Art Save Lives?, uniting current evidence for the health benefits of the arts with practice and policy; the NYU Stern School of Business, where she teaches improvisation and leadership; and the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, where she lectures on the role of the arts in supporting the wellbeing of people who are forcibly displaced. 

Her scholarship has focused on the therapeutic factors and outcomes of drama therapy, the creative arts therapies, and the health benefits of the arts more broadly within a context of health justice. Nisha received her PhD in interdisciplinary studies, combining drama therapy and community economic development, from the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University in Montreal. An award-winning author, educator, and advocate, her body of work explores unique ways in which aesthetic experience can inspire equity, care, and collective human flourishing across the lifespan.