I am a musician, educator and researcher. I am passionate about access to music for all and for access across our lifespans. In the past four years as a recipient of an ARC Early Career Fellowship (DECRA) for "creative ageing through transformative engagement with music", I looked at older music participants' perceptions of transformation through active music making. I am interested in the mechanisms and practices that make engagement with musical activities transformative as well as the barriers to positive experiences through music making. To make music communities more findable, I documented where musical activities for older adults are nationally in Australia through an interactive map which is here
During the ARC fellowship I worked with different music communities in Australia and the UK through a series of case studies. These case studies were in Maitland, New South Wales; Lake Macquarie and North Sydney, New South Wales; Hobart, Tasmania, and Central Victoria. The UK study was in London and Hertfordshire in collaboration with Prof. Rosie Perkins, Centre for Performance Science, Royal College of Music, London.
From 2020 I led a creative ageing research program with Professor Frini Karayanidis and Dr Michelle Kelly from the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Newcastle. The group which now includes Dr Sharon Savage, a neuropsychologist, ran a series of songwriting courses for older adults, leading to a Dementia Australia grant in 2022. For this grant, an artmaking program was added to the songwriting program to compare the cognitive, wellbeing and brain health effects of the courses and to investigate best practice in the programs' designs. In 2024 I was funded by the Primary Health Network as a partnership with Maitland Regional Art Gallery to investigate the benefits and barriers to participation in their program Conversations, Art and Dementia.
In 2024 a UK medical networking grant allowed the formation of a group of UK, US and Australian researchers to host a symposium in London and initiate a research collaboration. The group which includes Khalid Ali, Brighton Medical School; Robert Abrams, Weill, Cornell; Jennifer MacRitchie, University of Sheffield, and Justin Christensen, MARCS Institute, UWS, is currently working on a scoping review to map research using digital and AI enabled creative activities to foster social connectedness in residential aged care.
Recently I convened symposia on Creativity, Art and Ageing (2024) and AI and ageing (2025), both for the Australian Association of Gerontology (AAG). In 2025 I also co-edited a special feature on creativity, art and ageing for the Australasian Journal of Ageing with Dr Tricia King.