Dr Gary Ansdell
Director of Education
Gary trained as a music therapist at the Nordoff Robbins Centre in London in 1987, and later at the Institut für Musiktherapie, Universität Witten-Herdecke, Germany. He has worked with many client groups in the UK and Germany (currently in adult psychiatry) and has been involved in developing and researching Nordoff Robbins music therapy and its broader growth within the Community Music Therapy movement. From 1994-7 Gary was Research Fellow in Music Therapy at City University London, during which time he completed his doctoral thesis: ‘Music Therapy as Discourse and Discipline’. In 2002 he established the Research Department at the Nordoff Robbins Centre in London. Gary designed the first music therapy doctoral programme in the UK (also at Nordoff Robbins), and also the new MA in Music Therapy (Community Music Therapy / Nordoff-Robbins) which launched in 2008 and is hosted at the Royal Northern College of Music. He is Honorary Research Fellow in Community Music Therapy at the University of Sheffield, and a member of the advisory editorial board of three journals: British Journal of Music Therapy, Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, Music & Arts in Action. In 2008 he was awarded the Royal Society for Public Health Arts & Health Award. He has written five books and published widely in the fields of music, music therapy and music and health/wellbeing.
Some years ago Gary worked with a young man with a dual neurological/psychiatric diagnosis. This man frequently expressed his wish to die, but within music therapy sessions he also wanted to sing – loudly and joyously! “Why does a man who wants to die also want to sing?” This exemplary (and possibly unanswerable) question guides and inspires Gary’s practice, teaching and research in the fields of music therapy and music and health.
