Stavroulla Demetriou

Courses taught:

• Dramatherapy (Postgraduate)
• Music Therapy (Postgraduate)

Stavroulla is a dramatherapist and supervisor with 25+ years of clinical experience in the UK, Cyprus and Greece working in mental health, addiction, special needs, ASD and personal development workshops. In addition to teaching at ARU, she is part of the Roundabout team of dramatherapists and maintains a private practice. She is a former Editor of BADth’s journal, Dramatherapy.

[email protected]

Background

Stavroulla qualified as a dramatherapist from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama in 1995. After building her practice in the UK, she relocated to Cyprus where she pioneered dramatherapy. There she played a role in introducing arts therapies into the mental health services and worked to create a supportive community for arts therapists of all modalities.

She participated in, and led workshops for, bi-communal programmes for the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. In Greece she taught workshops on myth enactment and facilitated a two-year personal development project for women.

On her return to the UK, Stavroulla established herself as a trainer and expanded her supervision and clinical practice. Her passion for dramatherapy is informed by the belief that the artform is the healing agent, the importance of metaphor and symbol as the language of the soul and an integrative theoretical foundation that encompasses depth psychology, humanistic and psychodynamic perspectives.

She is active within BADth and as the ARU member representative for ECArTE, she is active on the European stage of contemporary Arts Therapy Education.

Spoken Languages

• English
• Greek

Research interests

• The concepts of intersections and liminal space in dramatherapeutic process
• Embodied myth & fairy tale enactment as an agent of change and transformation
• Personal narratives – how we language them and re-imagine them within therapy
• Reflexivity in therapy and supervision
• The use of metaphor in therapy and supervision

Teaching

Stavroulla currently teaches on the following modules:

• Clinical Placements & Experiential Development 1
• Clinical Placements & Experiential Development 2
• Dramatherapy Practical & Clinical Skills
• Music Therapy & Dramatherapy Multi-disciplinary & Theoretical Studies
• MA Major Projects
• Principles of Dramatherapy (undergraduate Module)

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) English language & Literature, Birmingham Polytechnic
• PG Cert Drama & Movement Therapy, Royal Central School of Speech & Drama
• Certificate in Clinical Supervision, Creative Arts Supervision Training
• PG Cert in Teaching in HE, ARU

Memberships, editorial boards

• HCPC – Health & Care Professionals Council
• BADth – British Association of Dramatherapists
• HEA - Fellow
• ECArTE, European Consortium of Arts Therapy Education, ARU Member Rep

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

• Peer research group exploring how embodied dramatherapy practices can be adapted to online platforms, 2020-2021

Recent presentations and conferences

Ritual Story Enactment, Workshop, C.I.A.P.T Conference, Thessaloniki, Greece 2019

In My End Is My Beginning - Harmonising the Opposites, Workshop, BADth 2018

The Voices in The Room, Workshop, BADth 2017

The Interplay of the Archetypal and the Personal - A Kaleidoscopic View, Paper and workshop presentation at day conference "When Jung is playing with Winnicott": Active Imagination, Archetypes and Playfulness in the Therapy Room and in Psychotherapeutic Playback Theatre, Israel 2017

Psyche’s Spirals - Ritual in the Service of Transformation, Paper, EDPE Dramatherapy Conference, Athens 2016