Professor Katrina Skewes McFerran
Professor Katrina McFerran completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2001 and has worked as a researcher and academic leader in Music, Dance and Drama Therapy at the university since 2004. She is creator of the open access Coursera Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) about How Music Can Change your Life and a TedX Talk on Returning from the Dark Side with Music which has had more than 130,000 views. She is the author of 5 books and 35 book chapters, as well as more than 130 refereed journal articles mostly focusing on music, youth, wellbeing and resilience. Prof McFerran has been awarded 4 major grants from the Australian Research Council to investigate this topic area and has collaborated with international experts on research for the Finnish Academy, New Zealand Education Council and the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science. She has supervised 26 PhD researchers in music, dance and drama therapy to completion and continues to lead the PhD seminar for creative arts therapies. Prof McFerran is committed to making creative arts therapies more easily accessible for people who would benefit from creative approaches to building resilience and fostering coping.