A city-based University and an Austrian institution have decided to work together to explore the potential of music therapy.
Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth Deemed University has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IMC University of Applied Sciences, Krems an der Donau, Austria, for engaging in collaborative research projects in the field of music therapy.
With Vienna’s legacy in classical music behind it, the IMC University has been in the forefront of music therapy application, education and research in Europe while the SBV here has been running a full-fledged music therapy division, the Center for Music Therapy Education and Research (CMTER) which has been pioneering music therapy services across training, research and patient care activities since 2010.
The CMTER has also been actively engaged in inter-disciplinary research creating evidences for music therapy applications in patient care outcomes, besides preparing the launch of a Masters Degree program in clinical applications of music from the academic year 2016.
Prof. Karl Ennsfellner, CEO of IMC University, and Dr. K.R. Sethuraman, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth Vice Chancellor signed the MoU in presence of Prof. Gerhard Tucek from Austria and Dr. Sumathi Sunder, Director of CMTER.
According to Dr. Sumathi Sundar, the collaboration, which will internationalise ongoing and future educational and research functions, will also involve student exchange programmes, and roll out of a collaborative Masters’ and Ph.D. Program in Medical Music Therapy. She expected the faculty and students of both the universities to benefit through these exchange programmes on music therapy. The collaborative research will focus on frontier areas such as neurological rehabilitation, role of neuro-science in music therapy and microanalysis besides video documentation in music therapy, music therapeutic traditions, hospital-based music therapy and medical research methods in music therapy.
The IMC University in Austria runs the Bachelors degree and Masters Degree programme in music therapy and SBV plans to utilise that expertise to launch a Ph.D program in Music Therapy soon.
Through this MoU, the Masters Degree students of IMC University will have the opportunity to pursue their Ph.D. program at SBV through CMTER.
The IMC University of Applied Sciences has so far established 27 music therapy programmes in all the hospitals of Austria on funding from the Austrian Government.
In fact, Austria has legislated a Music Therapy Law, which came into being about fifty years after the first music therapy course was introduced in Vienna.
The federal law which came into effect on July 1, 2009, is hailed as a crowning achievement for the persistent negotiations by the Austrian Association of Music Therapists.
Following the Music Therapy Law, music therapists can take up independent practice based on a master qualification in music therapy or do so in partnership based on a bachelor qualification in music therapy.
