PhD in Creative Arts Therapies
December 19, 2023
The PhD in Creative Arts Therapies program at Drexel University is at the forefront of training the next generation of researchers and leaders in creative arts therapies. By providing a research environment that encourages innovative and rigorous research, we seek to cultivate scholars who will advance knowledge, theory and clinical practice; drive innovation; and contribute to the growth of the creative arts therapies and ultimately to the mental, physical and social health of the society.
Because the PhD Program is situated in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, students participate in interdisciplinary research courses and engage in interdisciplinary team science. PhD students are offered a research fellowship, which provides full tuition remission as well as a generous stipend. In return, students assist faculty in their federally funded research labs. Through mentorship, our students have been successful in obtaining funding for their dissertation research. In addition, research fellows present with our faculty at prominent conferences and co-author publications. These experiences in the conduct and dissemination of research are unique to the PhD program at Drexel University and are unparalleled in doctoral training programs in the Creative Arts Therapies in the U.S.
Starting in Fall 2024, the PhD program at Drexel will offer a flexible in-person/hybrid learning format to help students balance school, family and work demands.
Doctoral students have the opportunity to work with art, music and dance/movement therapy researchers as part of their education.
Creative Arts Therapies Labs
The Music, Creativity and Wellness Lab is led by Joke Bradt, PhD and is focused on researching the impact of music therapy interventions on chronic pain and symptom management and investigating underlying mechanisms. Music-based interventions such as music listening and music-guided relaxation have been extensively researched for the management of acute pain such as lab-induced pain, procedural pain and postoperative pain. However, to date, few studies have examined the effects of music interventions on chronic pain management. Moreover, intervention studies on music for pain management have focused predominantly on listening to pre-recorded music. A major objective of the lab is to study the impact and underlying mechanisms of interactive music therapy interventions that capitalize on creative music engagement by people with chronic pain and other chronic health conditions.
The work in lab has received major funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Most recently, Dr. Bradt was awarded a $2.3M grant by the National Center of Complementary and Integrative Health at NIH to build the Music4Pain Network. This network will bring together multidisciplinary researchers to advance mechanistic understanding of how music helps to reduce pain.
The Mind-Body & Movement Research for Whole-Person Health Lab, under the leadership of Minjung Shim, PhD, serves as a pioneering research hub focusing on the intersection of mind-body health, creative/expressive arts and integrated care. The lab's core mission is to integrate mind-body practices and creative arts-based therapies into conventional health care through high-caliber research and clinical applications. A key vision of the lab is fostering interprofessional collaboration, bridging academic disciplines with clinical and community interests.
Dr. Shim's research primarily involves using rigorous methodological designs and an interdisciplinary lens to explore the feasibility and efficacy of dance/movement therapy (DMT) in enhancing health outcomes for individuals coping with medical conditions. This also includes elucidating the treatment mechanisms of DMT specified by theory.
The lab's research endeavors have garnered support from federal entities, such as the National Institute of Health, the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the National Endowment for the Arts. Key projects have delved into the benefits of mindfulness-based DMT in managing chronic pain and fostering healthy aging. Recently, the lab has been extending its reach by incorporating technological innovations like online interventions and virtual reality, furthering the scope and impact of Dr. Shim’s work.
The Health, Arts, Learning and Evaluation (HALE) Research Lab is led by Girija Kaimal, EdD. In this lab, which includes graduate students and research staff, she examines the physiological and psychological health outcomes of visual and narrative self-expression. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and most recently published a book with Oxford University Press called The Expressive Instinct. Her research has been continually funded since 2008 by federal agencies like the Department of Defense, Department of Education, National Endowment for the Arts as well as foundation and academic centers and has been featured by NPR, CNN, The New York Times as well as a range of media outlets worldwide.
In her current studies, Dr. Kaimal is examining outcomes of art therapy for military service members with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress, narratives from Gulf war veterans and arts-based approaches to mitigate chronic stress among patients and caregivers in pediatric hematology/oncology units. Additional international research projects include examining the therapeutic underpinnings of indigenous and traditional art forms and creative self-expression in times of adversity across the human lifespan.
Living out her research interests, she has been a lifelong visual artist and her art explores the intersection of identity and representation of emotion.
PhD Student Spotlights
Asli Arslanbek is a board-certified art therapist (ATR-BC) and a PhD candidate at Drexel University's Creative Arts Therapies program. She is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Tampa, where she teaches courses including Introduction to Art Therapy and Art Therapy with Children and Adolescents. Asli's scholarly work has been featured in various peer-reviewed journals, including The Arts in Psychotherapy, Art Therapy: Journal of American Art Therapy Association, Canadian Journal of Art Therapy and Frontiers in Psychology.
Her doctoral research is centered on the characteristics of arts-based psychosocial support training in humanitarian emergency settings. Asli is particularly interested in capacity building in using arts-based psychosocial support interventions in post-disaster and humanitarian emergency contexts. She is keen to explore the efficacy of arts-based interventions on improved well-being and mechanisms of change in art therapy in these areas in the future.
Monica Gaydos is a registered dance/movement therapist (R-DMT), yoga instructor, PhD candidate and adjunct faculty in the Creative Arts Therapies Department at Drexel University and a grant writer at the University of Pittsburgh. Her dissertation is entitled Dancing Across the Bridge: Women Exploring Midlife Transitions through Dance Movement Therapy -- An Arts-Informed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Her proposed study aims to investigate the lived experience of an ethnically diverse group of women exploring midlife transitions through the creative and embodied processes inherent in DMT. A secondary aim is to explore how movement-based artistic inquiry processes will elicit knowledge that is different from or inaccessible in text-based analysis alone. Monica’s research interests include embodiment, cultural influences on movement, women’s midlife health, phenomenology, arts-based research and neuroscience. Most recently, she co-authored a book chapter on trauma-informed dance/movement therapy in the context of medical illness.
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Stephenie Sofield, PhD candidate, is a full-time music therapist at Avanzar, a non-profit agency in southern NJ, where she serves child witnesses of intimate partner violence. She is a music therapy adjunct faculty member at Molloy University and recently served as the government relations chair and Anti-Oppressive Accountability Ad-Hoc Committee co-chair for the Mid-Atlantic Region (MAR) of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA). She received the MAR-AMTA 2023 Research Award for her dissertation research, titled "Collaborative Explorations of Child-Adult Power Dynamics: A Feminist Arts-Based Research Study." This research project aims to understand children’s experiences of child-adult power dynamics and to explore how creatively collaborating with children potentially transforms a feminist arts-based research method designed to explore child-adult power dynamics. Child collaborators will engage in 8 multimodal focus group sessions to explore, translate, and disseminate research findings to their communities. The results of this study will contribute to the development of power-sharing approaches in music therapy with children, while the collaborative refinement of the arts-based exploration method will provide a foundation for researching power dynamics between child service users and music therapists.
A Message from the Founding Director