Khyati Tripathi is a psychologist and anthropologist whose interdisciplinary research interweaves death studies, end-of-life care, and health systems, grounded in a deep engagement with the emotional, social, and cultural dimensions of dying, loss, and care. Her work integrates perspectives from anthropology, psychology, and health research, exploring how experiences of death are shaped on one hand by ritual and belief and on the other by structural conditions and healthcare contexts.

She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher on the ERC-funded TRAJECT project, which investigates the end-of-life trajectories of older adults with serious chronic illnesses. Within the project, she leads on research coordination and supervises doctoral researchers, contributing to its mixed-methods design. Khyati's work engages internationally with healthcare professionals, caregivers, and ritual specialists/performers, bringing a comparative and holistic lens to funerary and post-funerary practices, bereavement, palliative care, and the inequities that structure access to end-of-life support.

Trained across psychology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, her doctoral research- conducted through fieldwork in London and Delhi- examined the psychosocial meanings embedded in death rituals and the lived experiences of those performing them. Supported by a Commonwealth Split-site PhD Scholarship (2016-17), she spent a year at the Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, reflecting the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary ethos of her scholarship.

Khyati is deeply committed to producing socially responsive and interdisciplinary research that contributes meaningfully to public health discourse, particularly in the domains of end-of-life care, aging, and health systems. Drawing on her anthropological and psychosocial expertise, she approaches questions of care, suffering, and mortality not only as clinical or medical challenges but as deeply embedded in social, cultural, and structural realities. With a strong interest in health equity and the social determinants of care, she aims to bridge research and practice by informing policy and programmatic interventions that are grounded in lived realities, ethically attuned, and culturally sensitive.

She has taught psychology at the University of Delhi, contributed to both academic and public-facing publications, and remains actively involved in global scholarly networks. She was the inaugural Bajaj Visiting Research Fellow at the South Asia Institute, Harvard University (2022), where she continued as an Honorary Research Associate through early 2025. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath, and the India Ambassador for the Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS).