Shaakya Anand-Vembar is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, under the supervision of Drs. Simon McCarthy-Jones and Elizabeth Nixon. Her project focuses on shame in adult survivors of child sexual abuse, with the aim of developing cross-culturally valid measures of shame in this vulnerable population. She has a B.A. in Psychology from Columbia University, and an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Utrecht University.

She is also passionate about facilitating the uptake of open science practices, improving cross-cultural research methods, and encouraging diverse representation at all levels of research. She works on open science and sampling diversity initiatives as a scientific affairs officer in the Junior Researcher Programme, and is also involved in the Children’s Research Network’s Child Sexual Abuse/Child Exploitation Special Interest Group.