Ep 35 Katrina McFerran

Dr Katrina Skewes McFerran is Professor of Music Therapy,
Director of Graduate Research in Creative Arts Therapies, and
Head of the new Masters of Creative Arts Therapies (Dance/Drama)
at The University of Melbourne. She is a registered music
therapist with the Australian association, and Commissioner for
Research and Ethics of the World Federation of Music Therapy, as
well as being an Editor of the open-access, online forum for
music and health – Voices.no. She is also creator of the
free-access MOOC – How Music Can Change Your Life – which is full
of videos, podcasts and other educational resources for non-music
therapists. Her career as a music therapy researcher has largely
been focused on young people across a range of health, community
and education contexts, and she has written numerous books,
chapters and published more than 90 refereed journal articles on
this topic. Her most recent publications include a critical
review of the music therapy and adolescent literature
(McFerran, K.S. (2019). Adolescents and
Music Therapy: A Reflective Review with Recommendations for
Research and Practice, Music Therapy Perspectives, online first,
doi: 10.1093/mtp/miz014) as well as a book on beginning
music therapy research (McFerran, K.S. & Silverman, M.J.
(2018). A Guide to Designing Research Questions for
Beginning Music Therapy Researchers. Washington: American Music
Therapy Association Publishers.), as well as co-editing an Oxford
University Press Handbook with Phillipa Derrington and Suvi
Saarikallio (McFerran, K.S., Derrington, P. & Saarikallio, S.
(Eds.) (2019). Oxford Handbook of Music, Adolescents and
Wellbeing. Oxford. UK: Oxford University Press.)


In this interview Luke talked to Katrina about music therapy as
an intervention for psychological trauma, including some of her
recent research which raises questions about whether we can
reliably predict music therapy outcomes in this area of practice.
Also, is 'emotional regulation' a beneficial therapeutic aim? And
some handy tips on how to make your presentation look more
'scientific' than it really is!