Creative Arts Therapies Research Unit

The Creative Arts Therapies Research Unit (CATRU) aims to support the further development of creative arts therapy disciplines in Melbourne and wider Australia through research and research training.

Currently, this involves the development of a graduate research (PhD) training program for creative arts therapists, and international research collaborations with creative arts therapy academic institutions around the world.

CATRU is happy to announce that the first year of the graduate research program will begin in July 2016.

Our people

• 
  Professor Felicity Baker

  Co-Director, Chair of International Research and Partnerships

  Professor Felicity Baker

  Co-Director, Chair of International Research and Partnerships

  Professor Felicity Baker is the Head of Music Therapy at the University of Melbourne and a researcher within the creative arts therapies research unit who has specific expertise in music therapy, neurorehabilitation, dementia, songwriting, and voice work. She is passionate in researching how and why the creative arts contribute to the building of self-concept and identity following crises with a focus on the role of flow and meaning of the arts as mechanisms of change.

  Felicity is a former ARC Future Fellow and has attracted more than $4 mil in funding. She has published 5 books and over 100 articles and book chapters. Her most recent publication is Therapeutic Songwriting: Developments in Theory, Methods, and Practice (2015, Palgrave).

  Felicity is currently the Associate Editor for the Journal of Music Therapy.

• 
  Professor Katrina Skewes McFerran

  Co-Director, Chair of CATRU Advisory Board

  Professor Katrina Skewes McFerran

  Co-Director, Chair of CATRU Advisory Board

  Professor Katrina McFerran completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2001 and has worked as a researcher and lecturer in Music Therapy at the university since 2004. She is currently co-director of CATRU and Chair of the CATRU Advisory Board and Co-Director of the National Music Therapy Research Unit, as well as Editor-in-Chief of the open-access journal, Voices: A world forum for music therapy.

  Katrina’s music therapy interests have been focused on young people, and she has conducted a range of projects funded by the Australian Research Council, primarily focused in schools. She is committed to collaboration and mutually empowering relationships as a researcher, therapist, teacher, supervisor and in her everyday life. This has been expressed through a range of Participatory Action Research Projects, as well as an emphasis on qualitative research where participants’ perspectives are valued.

  Katrina is has supervised a 27 PhD and Masters research projects and continues to be engaged with a strong cohort of graduate researchers who are investigating music and music therapy with people in the health, education and disability sectors.

  She is author of the book ‘Music, Music Therapy and Adolescents’ and co-author, with Dr Daphne Rickson, of ‘Building Music Cultures in the Schools’. She has published more than 80 refereed journal articles and been invited to present locally and internationally about music, music therapy and young people.

• 
  Dr Kim Dunphy

  Postdoctoral Fellow

  Dr Kim Dunphy

  CATRU Postdoctoral Fellow

  Kim Dunphy (BA, Grad Dip Movement Dance, M.Ed, PhD; DTAA (Prof. DMT) ) Kim is Mackenzie Fellowship Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at CATRU. Her project develops her interests in assessment and evaluation of dance movement therapy, in the scoping and systematizing an outcomes framework for DMT, and international trials of an iPad for DMT assessment.

  Kim has worked as a dance educator and dance movement therapist in a range of settings, including community groups, schools, hospitals and disability services. She has lectured in dance education at Deakin and Melbourne Universities and dance movement therapy at RMIT University and Phoenix Institute. She is the President of the Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australasia; Chair of the Research Committee of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia; and Inaugural Convenor of the International Network for Dance Movement Therapy. Her recent publications include chapters in the The Oxford Handbook of Community Music, (Bartleet & Higgins, 2008), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing (Karkou, Oliver & Lycouris, 2017) and Dance Therapy Collections 4 (Guthrie & Mulllane, 2017). She is keen to supervise students with interests in dance movement therapy, assessment and evaluation.

• 
  Dr Kirsten Meyer

  CATRU Coordinator

  Dr Kirsten Meyer

  CATRU Coordinator

  Kirsten joined the Creative Arts Therapies Research Unit as coordinator in 2017. She is a dramatherapist by training and brings with her 18 years of experience as therapist, facilitator and educator in both South Africa and Australia. She has worked in clinical, educational and community settings, with a particular interest in group work and the intertwining of the psychological, social and political dimensions of stasis and change. In 2001 she co-founded the Zakheni Arts Therapy Foundation in South Africa, with the aim of working collaboratively across arts therapy modalities and with communities. Kirsten completed her PhD in 2017, through Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. She focused on arts active methods, the underlying core dramatherapeutic processes of change and how these might enhance care workers’ capacity to respond to children and young people. She has published a number of peer reviewed chapters and articles relating to her work.