Dr. Suneeta Kulkarni

Growing up in several places around the world and in India, Suneeta’s interests like those of her parents have veered around children and young people. Her professional endeavours have in some form or the other focused on these age groups. Following a bachelor’s in psychology from St. Xavier’s, Mumbai, she went ahead to complete a Masters in Educational Psychology from TAMU, USA and then a PhD in Psychology from Mumbai University. 

She spent a substantial part of the first half of her professional career [1981 to 2002] in university teaching, starting with Nirmala Niketan in Mumbai, and then in SNDT in Pune, with a brief stint in between as the student advisor at the then USEFI [now USEIEF] and as guest faculty in numerous colleges in both Mumbai and Pune. Her training in Counselling equipped her to follow through in her interests in using media [mainly theatre] for therapeutic purposes not only through teaching Lalit Kala Kendra, in Pune, but also developing resource packs for Grips plays. 

Alongside ‘Parenting’ one of her key interests has also been ‘Special Needs’. With an insider’s view as the parent of a son with a disability, she was also involved in several extended research projects [AWMH – Maharashtra and Inclusion International] to study quality of life issues for those with intellectual disabilities. Assignments with the Tata Trusts allowed her to travel to remote parts of India and work with issues of Special Needs from a more broad-based angle. This interest has been manifested in her participation in the efforts of voluntary parent groups to create facilitated family living for families with individuals having special needs.

The latter part of her career [2007-2016] focused on both research in children’s education in disadvantaged settings and being the force behind The Granny Cloud. This initiative reached out to children across the globe through eMediators [also across the globe]. The Granny Cloud officially functioned as a unique volunteer-based initiative from 2008 to 2022. It has since been closed down though Suneeta continues to offer support to similar initiatives through its still active website [www.thegrannycloud.org] and related groups. She is also the author of several distance learning course material prepared for IGNOU [New Delhi] and YCMOU [Nashik] pertaining to Child Development as also a couple of books [Manasshastra, Samajshastra aani Prayog Kala for Lalit Kala Kendra Pune] while co-authoring with her mother on ‘Responsible Parenthood & Harmonious Families’. To add to the numerous articles written over the years pertaining to her research and practice interests; Suneeta continues, as an intermittent blogger, to write about children, parents, and the environments they live in through ‘Granny Cloud Tales’ and ‘Environments for Children’ among other sites.