Ep 73 Giorgos Tsiris

This episode is Luke's conversation with Giorgos Tsiris, with a
focus on spirituality and music therapy.


Born and raised in Athens, Greece, Giorgos moved to London in
2007 for his music therapy training. For the past 14 years, he
has worked as a music therapist in diverse palliative care
contexts for adults with incurable illnesses, their families and
their local communities. He has developed collaborative community
and intergenerational projects disrupting societal assumptions
about death and dying, and his work has received national awards
and informed similar arts initiatives internationally. Alongside
his practice, Giorgos has a multifaceted research portfolio with
extensive experience in issues pertaining to service evaluation
and professionalisation in music therapy and within the wider
field of arts and health, and in 2014 he co-authored two books on
service evaluation and research ethics respectively. His
doctorate focused on spirituality and its place in music therapy.
Through an ethnographic lens, his research has brought to the
fore the ‘doing’ of spirituality, its messiness and its
performance within everyday music therapy contexts. Giorgos is
the founding editor of Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal
of Music Therapy, and in 2022 he co-chaired the 12th European
Music Therapy Conference. He currently serves as Senior Lecturer
in Music Therapy at Queen Margaret University and the Arts Lead
at St Columba’s Hospice Care, Edinburgh, Scotland.


 


References:


 


Bucar, L. (2022). Stealing my religion: Not just any
cultural appropriation. Harvard University Press.


 


MacKian, S. (2012). Everyday spirituality: Social and spatial
worlds of enchantment. Palgrave Macmillan.


 


Tsiris, G. (2017). Music therapy and spirituality: An
international survey of music therapists’ perceptions. Nordic
Journal of Music Therapy, 26(4), 293-319.


Tsiris, G. (2018). Performing spirituality in music therapy:
Towards action, context and the everyday (Doctoral dissertation,
Goldsmiths, University of London).
https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/23037/


Tsiris, G. (2021). Tracing spirituality in everyday music therapy
contexts: Methodological reflections. In K. Hendricks & J.
Boyce-Tillman & (Eds.), Authentic connection: Music,
spirituality and wellbeing (Chapter 10). Peter Lang.  


Tsiris, G., & Ansdell, G. (2019). Exploring the spiritual in
music. Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy,
11(1), 3-8. https://approaches.gr/tsiris-e20191124/