Sakshi completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Cambridge with affiliations to the Department of Psychology and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Her work reflects on two complementary strands of research inquiry: applied research into the effects of digital technologies on adolescent well-being, and meta-scientific research into the diversity of behavioural science.
The first strand delves into building a culturally informed approach to better understand the effects of technologies on the well-being of highly vulnerable and systematically underrepresented young populations in our science. Her PhD focused on examining digital media use in a hard-to-reach sample of rural girls and nationally represented adolescents across 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South-East Asia. The second strand responds to the urgent need to diversify research samples to include most of the world’s population and asking culturally salient and methodologically relevant questions about human behaviour.
Sakshi has won a range of awards including the Psychology of Technology Dissertation Award, the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science Mission Award, and Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Jenessa Shapiro Graduate Research Award. She has diverse professional experience spanning across corporate (Ogilvy), academic institutions (the Wharton School, the Vedica Scholars Program for Women) and international development (World Bank eMBeD) in India and US.
Sakshi received her BA (Hons) in philosophy from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi and her Master’s in Science in Behaviour and Decision Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. Sakshi was a 2015 Young India Fellow at Ashoka University.
Sample diversity, digital well-being, young populations, online child sexual abuse and exploitation, digital inclusion, generalisability, open research, meta-science, Global South
This programme addresses the assumptions that the overall mental well-being of young people is undergoing a pronounced period of decline and that digital technologies might be driving this trend.
With Professor Andrew Przybylski, and Dr Sakshi Ghai
Professor Andy Przybylski and Dr Sakshi Ghai discuss how the digital world is affecting society and individuals, and concerns around tech usage.
21 January 2025
With the rapid adoption of AI by children and adolescents using digital devices to access the internet and social media, OII experts call for a clear framework for AI research considering the impact on young people and their mental health.
30 November 2023
Sakshi Ghai, Postdoctoral Researcher, Oxford Internet Institute, has been awarded a Women of the Future Award in the Science Category.
1 September 2023
Sakshi Ghai, postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, together with her collaborators Dr. Lee de-Wit and Maria Mak, both from the University of Cambridge, recently received a SIPS Mission Award.
