Finding Harmony at the Intersection of Art, Spirituality, and Peace. Member Spotlight: Anupriya Kukreja
For Anupriya, the path to peacebuilding has been layered and interdisciplinary, similar to her relationship with art and music that has woven itself throughout her personal and professional lives. Born and raised in New Delhi, India, she describes growing up in a relatively liberal space, but for her, “it was still never enough for me. I needed a lot more freedom than what I had.” Drawn to creative and authentic pursuits early on in her life, she says, “I realized I either wanted to be a counselor or a musician when I was only 12 years old. And how I am now is basically exactly that.” Her interests in psychology, spirituality, and self-expression evolved side by side. As a teenager, Anupriya experienced mental health challenges that led her to explore different spiritual paths. “Therapy was very ineffective,” she recalls, “and that’s when I got really spiritual. I experimented with a few practices when I was sixteen and found a home in Buddhism.” Around the same time, she began writing extensively about personal growth, spirituality, and psychology, developing a voice that would eventually bridge scholarship and creativity.
Anupriya’s university years were pivotal. Studying psychology and political science at a liberal arts college in India at Ashoka University, she dedicated herself to social advocacy, co-founding a feminist collective and creating support groups for survivors of sexual harassment. “There was a lot of dark stuff,” she says, “but that’s when I had this awakening. I realized that these experiences were all trying to teach me one thing, which is boundaries, instincts, communication—and that’s when I got into bridge-building.” Her interest in dialogue deepened through both personal experience and academic curiosity. “I was constantly surrounded by a liberal versus conservative dynamic––intellectually and living it,” she explains, describing how political tensions on campus led her to explore conflict resolution theory. “I read about Jonathan Haidt and how political ideologies are informed by our moral taste buds… and that’s really what got me into conflict resolution.”
While discovering peacebuilding, Anupriya also pursued her lifelong love of music. What began as guitar performances in college grew into a new creative identity as a DJ and music producer. “I started doing gigs and stuff,” she says. “It was very clear to me. I really want to get into production and electronic music.” Her music practice became a space for healing. “All pain takes us to purpose,” she reflects. “I really understood my purpose in conflict resolution and political polarization and developing the skills to manage conflict and be mature and see people for who they are early on.”
Post-college, Anupriya worked as a researcher and writer in behavior science and peace psychology. These roles allowed her to “stay connected to my intellectual interests while also writing and creating.” She became Editor-in-Chief of The Peace Psychologist (APA Division 48), a position she notes “no non-PhD has held before.” Later, she joined the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University, where she co-authored a study on cross-cultural conflict education and how to teach conflict resolution in parts of the world where it’s not traditionally present, titled “Teaching Peace Top-down, Bottom-up, or Both? Navigating Basic Dilemmas in Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution Education”. The paper, now published in Negotiation Journal (MIT Press), remains a source of pride: “It was something I’m super proud of—my first journal publication.” Another major project, Polarization Detox Project, gave Anupriya the chance to apply her research directly to bridge-building initiatives. “It was a program for folks in America who are extremely polarized,” she says. “We were building an applicable tool for people to actually develop the skills for peaceful discussions when you politically really disagree.”
Through these experiences, Anupriya found herself reflecting deeply on the spiritual dimensions of conflict work, a journey that eventually led her to Columbia University for a master’s program in Spiritual Psychology (SMBI) and Conflict Resolution. “I like to think of everything as spiritual,” she says. “We use the term conflict transformation, which is a big claim because it’s so rare and so beautiful. That’s the miracle that we all want, right? When that happens, there are a lot of ways in which the divine or the universe supports that process.” She hopes future scholarship, and hopefully her own research, will explore questions like: “What role do processes or spiritual variables like gratitude, synchronicities, mystical experiences, or intuition play a role in conflict resolution?”
This interest in the intersection of spirituality and peace now extends into her current professional life. Anupriya works for a spirituality-focused startup that connects users to spiritual guides through a mobile platform called Sol. “It’s a complex place to be in,” she admits. “There’s a lot of potential but not a lot of conversions.” Still, she sees the experience as meaningful. “I feel like I’m being invited in a direction of entrepreneurship,” she says. “Even during my time at the Morton Deutsch Center, I was managing the polarization project, and it eventually became this idea to build an app. Maybe there’s some purpose for me there.”
When asked how she came to MBBI, Anupriya describes a unique chain of events: “I attended a panel moderated by MBBI while cheering on a friend who was presenting her startup on trauma healing for sexual assault survivors. In the comment section, something came up about peace and justice, and I mentioned my master’s thesis: how to bring justice into mediation and what neutrality even means.” Her comment sparked several connections that led her to meet members of the MBBI community in person that very night. “Everyone said, ‘You have to join!’” she laughs, “so I did.” Though still new, she’s eager to get involved: “I’d love to serve on editorial projects because that’s my background. I want to find collaborators for research ideas that I know would be good empirically because they haven’t been done before.”
When asked what lessons she’s taken from her experiences mediating informally, Anupriya answers with honesty: “Not all conflict needs to be resolved. Sometimes space and distance are necessary. There are moments where you know this can’t work because the perspectives and needs are so far apart, and it’s okay to accept that.” She adds that even when resolution isn’t possible, “that person plays a role in your life… the pain they’re igniting is there for a reason.” Ultimately, Anupriya’s message is one of interconnectedness: “Art, spirituality, and peace are all interconnected,” she says. “For peace to be powerful, we need transferable principles and lessons across art, spirituality, and scholarship.
Peace is justice as well. There is no peace without justice.”
Article by Sarah Stenovec, MBBI Writer