Professor Helen Odell-Miller
Director, Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research
For over forty years, Helen’s research and clinical work has contributed to establishing music therapy as a profession – and specifically to innovating approaches in adult mental health, including early links between music therapy and psychoanalysis. She has published widely on music therapy for people with personality disorders, psychosis and depression, and also on arts therapies and mental health. She founded music therapy in the adult NHS mental health service in Cambridge and advises HEE England and the Department of Health on music therapy, serving on many national and international boards.
Helen was Head of Arts Therapies and therapy services for older peoples and adults, for many years in the NHS, and she was also co-founder of the MA Music Therapy course at Anglia Ruskin University, in 1994. Helen has lectured widely, and has been a keynote speaker at many national and international conferences in Europe, Australia, Asia and the USA. She has worked with parliament and the government advising on music therapy. Most recently she was one of the Commissioners for the Music and Dementia Strategy in the UK, produced by the International Longevity Centre, and launched at the House of Lords, London, in January 2018: What would life be? Without a Song or Dance, What are We? She is co-editor and an author for the books Supervision of Music Therapy (Jessica Kingsley 2009), Forensic Music Therapy (Routledge 2013) and Collaboration and Assistance in Music Therapy Practice (2017). She has published widely in national and international peer reviewed journals and authored many book chapters. She is a pianist, violinist, and a singer in Cambridge Voices chamber choir.