An innovative and exciting new stage in the journey of bringing together the arts, play and therapeutic practice.

At the University of Roehampton we are in the unique position of being the only university in the world that offers professional training in all the arts and play therapies. We offer full time and part time MA programmes in Art Psychotherapy, Dance Movement Psychotherapy, Dramatherapy, Music Therapy and Play therapy as well as opportunities to undertake Doctoral research.

We are one of four disciplinary themes in a lively School of Psychology, whose research promote collaboration across disciplines and research centres. In addition, we collaborate with colleagues in other Schools across the university in the arts, sciences and humanities.

Examples of our collaborative research themes include:

• Working with ethnically diverse children and their families using play and arts therapies
• Therapeutic Theatre
• Music and Psychoanalysis
• Dance, sexuality and identity
• Articulating the process(es) of play therapy
• Death, Dying and Bereavement
• Drawing on older men’s experiences of ageing
• Usages of digital devices, new media, and immersive tools for therapeutic and educational practices
• Mentalizing and the arts therapies

We are also engaged in national and international research partnerships within the university, voluntary and cultural sectors. Our collaborators include:

• University of Bergen
• University of Edinburgh
• George Washington University
• University of Melbourne
• New York University
• University of Oslo
• Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research (CIMTR)
• Centro di Artiterapie, Milan
• Play therapy in Bangladesh initiative: The Orphan Trust and Dhakar University
• College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University, Philadelphia USA

Our aims and ethos

Our aim is to deepen the scholarship within each modality, celebrating the potentiality of discreet practices, whilst at the same time recognising the enrichment of interdisciplinary relationships.

We embrace a range of methodological approaches, in the main linked to qualitative and critical paradigms, including arts based research, practice as research, pedagogical, professional and philosophical enquiry.

Our researchers are trained and experienced practitioners, trainers and consultants, and who support and supervise colleagues across the world.

We are committed to producing high quality research output in a variety of print, digital and arts based formats. We are also committed to developing a research culture, which provides a focus for professional colleagues who may be new to research in the arts, play and related disciplines.

To this end we are launching an extensive programme of different kinds of events, which will offer opportunities to bring together diverse groups of thinkers and practitioners, from first time researchers to seasoned international presenters, in the spirit of co-operation with a mission to bring about personal and social change through the arts and play in the therapeutic process.