CIMTR's Public Research Lecture Series with Prof Felicity Baker: ‘Music Interventions to support families, professional caregivers, and people living with dementia.’

We invite you to join us for our online webinar on Monday 6th November, 7.30-8.30 p.m.

Prof Felicity Baker will be presenting ‘Music Interventions to support families, professional caregivers, and people living with dementia.’

Abstract:
Music therapy is increasingly recognized as an effective support for people living with dementia. However, with incidences of dementia increasing, and limited availability of music therapists, there is a need for affordable and accessible ways that caregivers can learn to use music-therapy based strategies to support the people they care for. HOMESIDE, MATCH, and MATCH-H are studies involving in direct models of music therapy whereby music therapy informed principles are taught to caregivers or embedded in technology to support the care they provide with people with dementia. In the presentation, I outline the studies, what we have found to date, and what opportunities there are for the future.

Principal Speaker Biography:
Professor Felicity Baker is Associate Dean Research for the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at University of Melbourne and Director of International Research Partnerships for the Creative Arts and Music Therapy Research Unit. She is former Australia Research Council Future Fellow (2011-2015) and during this fellowship built models of songwriting as practiced through the lenses of different orientations (Therapeutic Songwriting: Developments in Theory, Methods, and Practice, Palgrave 2015), and is currently leading a series of trials with people living with dementia. Felicity has attracted more than $15.5 million in competitive research funding including Principal Investigator on 3 National Health and Medical Research Council grants, (NHMRC), an Australia Research Council Discovery Grant and a Medical Research Future Fund.

She is currently International Project Leader of the HOMESIDE randomised controlled trial involving research teams in Australia, UK, Norway, Poland and Germany and Principal Investigator on the project Music Attuned Technology Care eHealth (MATCH) involving interdisciplinary teams from University of Melbourne in the Faculties 1) Fine Art and Music, 2) Engineering and IT, 3) School of Medicine, and 4) School of Population and Global Health. Disciplines include allied health, psychiatry, software and hardware engineering, human computer interaction, health economics, and biostatistics.
She is currently Associate Editor, Journal of Music Therapy. Felicity was National President of The Australian Music Therapy Association (2010-2014), the national peak body for the discipline, and former editor of The Australian Journal of Music Therapy. Felicity has received a number of awards including an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation Award (2009), an American Music Therapy Association Research Award (2015), the World Federation of Music Therapy Research Award (2017) and an ADC Australian Leadership Award (2011). Felicity has published widely with over 150 publications (see Google Scholar).

Her latest book Leadership and Management of Clinical Trials in the Creative Arts Therapies was recently published by Palgrave (2022). This book is the first in the creative arts therapies that provides guidance on clinical trial implementation. It focuses on project management, budget planning and management, governance, building a team, and developing a strategy for successful recruitment, data management, monitoring, and intervention fidelity and development of a knowledge transfer and exchange plan as well as how to commercialise research.