Richard Coaten’s biography

Richard is a DMP recently retired from an NHS hospital in England where he ran for 16 years a DMP Service in an in-patient ward for older people with mental health problems. He is a leading specialist in movement and dance with people living with ‘brain ageing’ and has just co-edited, “A New Practical Handbook on Living with Dementia” by PCCS books. With a doctoral thesis on the subject from Roehampton University and Churchill Fellow since 2010, he has travelled extensively in Europe, the USA and Canada, giving workshops and talks and is on the Editorial Board of ‘Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice’.

Mary Coaten’s biography

I am a dance movement psychotherapist and practitioner/researcher working in the NHS in both the acute mental health and community outpatient settings i.e. a Psychological therapies trauma focused service. In 2020, I completed my doctorate at the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University and continue my work there as a research associate. My research explored the impact of group dance movement psychotherapy in the context of the acute mental health setting, with a focus on psychosis spectrum disorder. The dynamic qualitative aspects of movement and its meaning on a relational level, are of particular interest to me. I am interested in interdisciplinary research, phenomenological approaches to psychiatry, movement analysis in dance movement psychotherapy, Jungian psychotherapy and developing creative methodologies which help to capture the moving body and the interpersonal. Of particular interest is how to research and work with altered experiences of space and time, which can be experienced during periods of acute mental distress.

Marja Cantell’s biography

In my search to understand the moving body, my studies in psychology, human movement science and dance movement therapy have taken me across the globe. My research is multidisciplinary and applies mixed methodologies such as movement assessments and embodied observation. In my current position as A/Professor at the Inclusive and Special Needs Education Department, University of Groningen (the NL), I coordinate the international Master Track in Deafblindness. In my other position at Codarts University of the Arts, Rotterdam the NL, I teach research methodology and coach MA in Arts Therapies students in their research projects. More information: www.movementcantell.com

Ana Coimbra Oliveira’s biography

I am a clinical and health psychologist, psychotherapy specialist, with a private and institutional psychoanalitic practice. I started my career at the NHS working with adolescents/young people. I am very interested about Change, be it determined by life-cycles, self intention, relation, art, movement, desire, conflict, loss, disease, … As a DMT, I am developing a PhD research at the Faculty of Human Motricity – Dance Studies, University of Lisbon: I am using Dance, particularly, DMT with psycho-oncology patients, as a way to better understand and integrate those changes determined by oncologic disease/treatments/distress. Also, in the last 25 years I have been collaborating with friends and colleagues in educational, artistic and comunitary projects, using dance/movement for joy and my own processes of change. More info

Pauliina Jääskeläinen’s biography

Pauliina Jääskeläinen is working as a researcher at the University of Lapland, Social Sciences Department. Her background as a Dance teacher and Dance Movement therapist shows in her research interests, which focus on embodiment and embodied research methods in the field of Management and Organization studies. Pauliina uses Dance Movement therapy’s practical, embodied methods to explore the experiences of work communities, leadership, teamwork and other organizational phenomena. Drawing from the phenomenology of the body, her interest has also been to search for ways to do the research and research writing in more embodied ways.

Päivi Pylvänäinen’s biography

Päivi Pylvänäinen is a clinical psychologist and dance movement therapist, with a long experience of working in public outpatient mental health services. She completed her DMT training in the US, and in 2018 in Finland her dissertation at the University of Jyväskylä. The dissertation integrated her research and international publications on body image, body memory, DMT, and depression. Attending to the lived, socially experiencing, and creative body motivates her work as a researcher, as a therapist and as a mental health professional. Päivi Pylvänäinen has also been involved with the DMT training in Finland. She is a long standing president of the Finnish Dance Therapy Association.