Veronica Austin

Indicative thesis title: Investigating music therapy assessment and evaluation procedures for young people with intellectual disabilities in UK schools.

Background

Supervisory team: Prof Helen Odell-Miller (1st), Prof Amelia Oldfield (2nd)

Veronica trained at Roehampton University, London in 1985-86, having previously qualified as a teacher in 1982. Between 1987-2013 she worked as a music therapist and teacher in mainstream and special schools with children, young people and families with a variety of special educational needs in South-East England.

Veronica was a senior lecturer on the Roehampton music therapy training course between 2006-2013, and from 2013-2015 worked on a project to deliver and evaluate the impact of music therapy on the children’s wards at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Since 2003 she has run a private supervision practice in Hampshire, where she also lives. Veronica has been involved with Key Changes Music Therapy service since it began as Hampshire MusicSpace in 1997.

Veronica is a flautist and greatly enjoys playing and teaching the flute. She began her PhD in 2016 and hopes to complete in 2021.

Research interests

• Assessment and evaluation in music therapy
• Music therapy with young people with learning disabilities
• Music therapy in schools

Qualifications

• PG Dip, Professional Studies in Education
• MA, Music Therapy
• Diploma, Music Therapy

Selected recent publications

Molyneux, C., Apreleva, A., Blauth, L., Bloska, J, and Austin, V., 2020. Book Review: Barbara L. Wheeler and Kathleen Murphy (eds), Music Therapy Research. British Journal of Music Therapy, 34, pp. 61-66.

Anderson, C., Austin, V., Corke, E., Fearn, M. C., Mitchell, E., Tomlinson, J., 2015. The Flute. In Oldfield, A., Tomlinson, J., Loombe, D. (eds), 2015. Flute, Accordion or Clarinet? Using characteristics of our instruments in music therapy (London: Jessica Kingsley), pp. 69-94.