She is trained in Laban Movement Analysis, Person-Centered Counselling, Group Analysis and Authentic Movement, works with children, adolescents and adults, conducts research, supervises PhDs, teaches and examines at doctorate level nationally/internationally. She is the founding editor-in-chief for the international peer reviewed journal ‘Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy’ published by Taylor and Francis. Trained in the discipline of authentic movement since 1994 she has been facilitating circles as a form of group psychotherapy ever since. She is clinical manager for the University of Hertfordshire’s service which supports people with persistent bodily symptoms for which tests and scans come back negative. She has recently been honoured to have been invited to join the Therapies Task Force for Medically Unexplained Symptoms. Her current publication is entitled ‘Essentials in dance movement psychotherapy: International perspectives on theory, research and practice’ published by Routledge.

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Dr. Zhou serves on an international advisory board for the journal Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy. He founded Inspirees Education Group and Creative Arts Education and Therapy (CAET) – Eastern and Western Perspectives, the international open access journal. He is also a certified movement analyst (CMA) trained by LIMS in New York. Dr. Zhou is the team leader for the Chinese Group of Arts Therapy, Chinese Psychological Society, Guest Professor of Beijing Normal University, Co-founder and core member of World Alliance of Dance Movement Therapy. He also serves as the CEO of International Association of Creative Arts in Education and Therapy (IACAET).

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She has used the arts as a way of communicating across borders and across cultures and believes in the power of the arts to create the conditions for personal and social change and transformation. As former founder and director of the Arts Institute Project in Israel, she has been influential in the development of Expressive Arts Therapy in that country. Her current interests are in working with communities under duress,  trauma through the arts,  and cross-cultural conflict transformation. She is a co-editor of The Arts, Education and Social Change: Little Signs of Hope, published by Peter Lang.

Dr Speiser has taught throughout the world and believes in the use of the arts as a way of communicating across borders and across cultures. She believes in the power of the arts to create the conditions for personal and social change and transformation. Her interests and expertise lie in the areas of working with communities under duress through an integrated arts approach. Many of her publications are grounded in her work with trauma and cross-cultural conflict resolution through the arts. In addition, she is an expert in the creation and performance of ‘rites of passage rituals’ and in the use of performance in expressive therapy practice.

Her contributions to the field have made her an international leader in dance and expressive therapy, and most recently earned her a Fulbright Scholar Award as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Journal of Applied Arts and Health in 2019. Other awards include the 2014 Distinguished Fellows Award from the Global Alliance for Arts and Health and a 2015 Honorary Fellow Lifetime Achievement award from the Israeli Expressive and Creative Arts Therapy Association (ICET)

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Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySA), and South African National Arts Therapy Associations (SANATA). He an accredited guide of the Listening Hour and a Playback Theatre practitioner. Warren is a Salzburg Global Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow and the recipient of several awards, including the Vice-Chancellor’s Transformation Award and the Adelaide Tambo Human Rights Award.

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Michal is a faculty lecturer at the graduate art therapy program at Ono Academic College–ASA in Israel, advising students in their seminar thesis and promoting art-based pedagogy and research. Her published research and presentations focus on intimacy, art-based research, and creative process-oriented pedagogy.

Dr. Lev is the head of the approval committee for YAHAT – the Expressive Therapies Organization in Israel since 2016, supporting public legislation for expressive therapies. As a social activist, artist, and entrepreneur, she maintains artmaking for innovation, inquiry and knowledge within business environments.

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He has served as director at the Arbour Counseling Partial Hospitalization Program in Norwell, MA and also the founding director of the arts therapy department at Whittier Street Health Center, Boston. He has worked and developed programs with individuals and groups in conflict around the globe.

After 9/11 he developed and implemented the Healing Arts Program, an arts-based ‘trauma recovery/prevention’ program in Boston and New York City.

In the early 1990’s he was a founding member of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association and served as co-chair. During the 1980’s he lived in Sweden and did pioneering work in the field of Expressive Arts & Expressive Arts Therapy throughout Scandinavia. Phil is a senior lecturer at Lesley University, Cambridge MA & research associate at Drama For Life, University of the Witwatersrand, SA.  He has taught at numerous colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. He has worked extensively within the fields of mental health, special education, arts and medicine/health/disabilities and conflict transformation.

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She has been providing individual and group expressive arts therapy for different populations including local and international schools, corporations, NGOs, youth centres and elderly homes. Prior to becoming a therapist, Joanna had been a Marketing and Communications professional with Fortune 500 companies for over 15 years. With her expertise working in corporate settings, she has been developing different arts-based programmes such as staff training and development, career counselling, employee well-being and engagement , team building, etc. She would love to promote Expressive Arts Therapy to the general public in cultivating personal growth and holistic health.

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Stephen was one of the founding editors of Arts & Health, an international journal for research, policy and practice.  He is joint editor with Professor Paul Camic of the Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health and Wellbeing.

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Kathryn’s practice and research scholarship draws on neuroscience, enactive cognition, creative learning and Deleuzoguattarian thinking. Her focus includes the performative work of making in the visual arts, the connection between art/science, both in educational and medical transdisciplinary research; arts-education and its methods in nurturing critical, ethical and caring individuals; narrative research and the significance of story-telling for individuals and across cultures; arts-based methods; the performative work of image construction; critical and social inquiry; subjectivity insights; embodied learning and visual performative pedagogies as they surround the contemporary subject.

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Francesca wants to revolutionize the way we look at tart and creativity. She is an artist, entrepreneur, marketing expert and board advisor, who is passionate about social impact and business strategies with a purpose. She sees art as a form of medicine and believes in the power of creativity to unleash human potential.

She has consistently spearheaded award-winning campaigns and strategies, and received  the recognition of Marketer of the Year – MENA, by the prestigious Effie Awards.

Passionate about business and culture as forces for good, Francesca also co-authored a #1  Amazon book on a topic dear to me, Conscious Leadership.

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In her 10+ years as a dance/movement therapist, Erica has worked with thousands of patients aged 3-107! Known as “The Therapist Who Moves You,” Erica has truly changed the way people see movement with regard to mental health.  She has been recognized by Maria Shriver’s Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement as a woman making a difference in the fight against Alzheimer’s.  Erica won the 2018 Global Excellence Award in the Alternative Medicine and Holistic Health Category from Global Health & Pharma and the 2020 Social Care Award for Best Movement Therapy Center in Chicagoland.

Erica’s area of expertise has caught the attention of multiple publications such as The Epoch Times, Dance Magazine, Martha Stewart Weddings, and PARADE. As an expert on the intersection of movement and mental health, she has appeared in hundreds of publications, podcasts, live newscasts, and radio including WGN, NBC, The Chicago Sun Times, The Chicago Tribune, Buzzfeed, Bustle, Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, Medium, NBC News Better, Reader’s Digest, and Prevention. As a columnist for Dance Informa Magazine, 30 Seconds, and Thrive Global, Erica writes about all things movement and mental health.

Erica’s is passionate about working with cognitive and movement disorders, neurologic conditions, anxiety and depression, and trauma.  Erica is dedicated to bringing awareness to the field of dance/movement therapy to mainstream culture.  She is eager to provide knowledge on why and how the body should be addressed in the therapeutic relationship; making the information digestible and accessible to anyone seeking to improve mental health.

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She is the Co-Founder of ‘Synchrony’, an organisation that provides mental health services and trainings through creative arts with various populations. Ms. Mehta is the elected Treasurer and the Founding board member of IADMT. She is an Advisory  Board  Member of Creative Movement Therapy Association, India.  She has represented her work in India on multiple International Conferences and contributed to article on development of DMT in Asia. Her areas of interest are in that of neuro-rehabilitation, cultural consciousness in the body and working with adolescents.

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She also worked as a primary school teacher for a number of years and was Educational Director of Young People’s theatre in South Africa. Her PhD, from the University of Melbourne Australia, examined the role of oral art forms in supporting Drama pedagogy and intercultural understanding within teacher education and her Masters, from the University of Fort Hare South Africa, examined personal and contextual constraints in the use of classroom drama. She has published and presented numerous papers, books and workshops nationally and internationally. Some of her most recent work involves examining ways in which the Arts (particularly Drama) creates dialogical spaces and supports cultural identities in early childhood, primary, enabling and teacher education contexts. Another of her research interests, that she continues to explore, is identifying Drama strategies and techniques to support and enhance learning and teaching in diverse learning and teaching contexts.

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Dan has published on therapeutic theatre with youth at-risk of high school dropout, on developmental transformations, and on arts based project regarding gun violence.  His current research interests include eco art therapy and spirituality, as well as exploring intersectional identity with college students.

Dr. Summer is a site visitor for the Accreditation Council for Art Therapy Education (ACATE) which credentials art therapy programs, and participates in social justice initiatives at Caldwell University and other communities.  As a socially conscious practitioner and educator, he makes response art toward social injustices  and reinforces to his students the responsibility of social consciousness toward those being served in multiple communities.

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His research focusses on creating a regenerative African performance making practice based on ancient, indigenous mind-body forms from Ghana, West Africa. He is an arts educator, performer, performance maker, and project leader. He guest teaches and examines for Drama for Life, University of the Witwatersrand. He has lectured Movement Studies for Wits School of Arts, taught Performance Studies and Design in the Theatre Arts Department, University of Ghana, and was Head of the Creative Arts Department, Tema International School. His creative arts somatic education work is found in Ghana, South Africa and Germany.

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She is the founder Director of the Dance Movement Therapy Training Program of Buenos Aires, Argentina, being the 1º DMT systematic training Spanish-speaking in the world (1996). She has taught seminars at the Argentine School of Psychotherapy for Graduates; at the Universidad del Salvador, at the University of Palermo, at the Universidad San Andrés. She develops her private practice as a Dance Movement Psychotherapist with adults, families, couples and dance therapists in training. She coordinates didactic groups and has given conferences and seminars in Institutions and Universities in Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, and the Czech Republic. As an exceptional candidate, she was appointed * Didact member of the American Dance Therapy Association since 2000 (BC-DMT). She is the Founding President of the Argentine Association of Dance Therapy (2000-2004). She has presented workshops at local and international conferences. She currently teaches seminars in the Master in Dance Movement Therapy at the National University of Art, UNA in Buenos Aires and in the Master in DMT at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She was Academic Advisor at the Council of the Master in DMT of the UNA, in Agreement with b r e c h a . She has published “Embodied Empathy” at Editorial Académica Española and published articles in International Journals and in the book “La vida es Danza” compiled by Chaiklin – Wingrober. She directs the Research line: “Movement patterns and social interaction” for the Universidad Nacional del Arte, Argentina.  Currently develops online DMT webinars.

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