
People at the Sociocultural Lab

Dr Apurv Chauhan
Lab Director
Apurv is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Psychology at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Taos Institute.
His research examines on communication, identity, meaning, and the social construction of knowledge across contexts such as health, homelessness, and education.
Apurv served on BPS National Expert Group on Poverty (2020-21) and currently serves on the APA Division 5 Task Force on Indigenous Psychology.

Asrar Kayal
PhD Researcher
Asrar is an ESRC DTP student working under Apurv’s supervision. Her PhD thesis examines the psychological legacy of intra-communal violence within the Palestinian indigenous community in Israel. She is a licensed educational psychologist.

Wen Zhang
PhD Researcher
Wen’s doctoral work investigates the cultural, pedagogical, and psychosocial challenges encountered by Chinese international students in the UK with a focus on the role of social capital. She holds an MSc in Counselling Studies from the University of Edinburgh and is a qualified BACP psychotherapist.

Aratrika Dutta
Senior Intern
Aratrika completed her Bachelor’s in Psychology from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi. She is currently a MSc student at Jamia. Her research interests include social justice, intergroup relations. Her work in the lab is on media representations of sexual crime victims in India.

Anushka De
Senior Intern
Anushka read psychology at KCL and is currently an MSc student at UCL. She is interested in culture, gender and mental health and accessible science communication. In the lab, she is working on the cultural patterning of sympathy project.

Disha Das
Senior Intern
Disha read psychology at KCL and is currently an MPhil candidate at Cambridge. She is interested in using quantitative methods to study human decision-making in applied contexts. In the lab, she is working on the cultural patterning of sympathy project.

Elif Ozkan
Intern
Elif is a third-year Psychology student at Middle East Technical University with a minor in Sociology. Her research interests are on social identity, migration, and cultural psychology. In the lab, she is involved in the voices of homelessness project and in the cultural patterning of sympathy project where her focus is on Turkey.

Karya Tutuncim
Intern
Karya is a BSc Psychology student at Aix-Marseille University, pursuing a career in social psychology research. Her academic interests include cross-cultural research, gender inequalities, and social representations. In the lab, she is investigating the cultural patterning of sympathy hypothesis within Islamic countries.

Dr Surbhi Sehgal
University of Brighton
Surbhi is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Business and Law, University of Brighton. Her research looks at emotions during periods of change. She collaborates with the lab on collective emotions and text analysis.

Prof Chetan Sinha
Jindal Global University
Chetan is a Professor of Psychology at OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat. He teaches critical psychology of law, psychology of education, and neuroscience and law. He is broadly interested in the social psychology of power in the educational context.

Prof Vivek Belhekar
University of Mumbai
Vivek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology, University of Mumbai. His work looks at evolutionary psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and psychological aspects of economic behavior. He collaborates with the lab on methodological issues and approaches in computational analysis in social sciences.
Alumni
Past members of the research group
- Mridusmita Bhagwati, PhD Candidate, IIT Kanpur, India
- Alice Purvor, King’s College London, UK
- Hiral Trivedi, Jindal Institute of Behavioral Science, JGU, Sonipat, India
- Ruyi Cheng, King’s College London, UK
- Natasha Etherington, University of Brighton, UK
- Ashley Reilly-Thornton, University of Brighton, UK
- Matilda Skipper, University of Brighton, UK
- Zain Ahmad, King’s College London
- Samira Ali, King’s College London
- Melodie Bornes, King’s College London
- Syeda Tanisha Hussain, King’s College London
- Somaiya Ikram, King’s College London
- Alexa Isla, King’s College London
- Lauren Perry, King’s College London
- Haruhi Sano, King’s College London
- Sana Warsi, King’s College London