Simon Keith Gilbertson, Dr. rer. medic, Dipl. Music Therapist (NR), Dipl. Music Therapist (Univeristy Witten/Herdecke), HPC Registered Music Therapist (Arts Therapies)
I'm a musician, music therapist, researcher, writer, and 'maker-scholar' (who makes and designs things as a direct form of knowledge and experience making). I currently work as Associate Professor, Music Therapy, The Grieg Academy - Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Arts, Music and Design, University of Bergen, Norway.
I completed my early training as a musician at the Junior School of the Royal Academy of Music in London with Alan Owen (piano, composition) and John Wilbraham (trumpet) both of whom I am hugely grateful for their mentorship and inspiration, The Purcell School (at that time in Harrow, UK) and then studied composition and King's College, University of London. With my trumpet(s) or bass in hand, or sitting at a piano/synth, I have been lucky to play in a variety of settings (concert halls, pubs, clubs), constellations (bands, ensembles, orchestras and solo) and music genres and styles.
I qualified as a music therapist in 1993 from the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Center in London, UK. Since then I have been fortunate to have worked as a therapist with children/adults with unique developmental and health biographies, and as a researcher, writer and educator in clinics and universities in England, Germany, Ireland and Norway. I received my doctoral qualification in 2005 from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Witten/Herdecke for a thesis about improvisational music therapy in early neurosurgical rehabilitation with people who have had severe traumatic brain injuries.
Alongside contemporary music therapy theory and practices, I have a passionate interest in things, anthropology, design, kindness, the history of the senses, ontogenesis, discrimination, propoganda, systemic change and epistemological diversification and like to consider how these all affect research, practice and education and everyday life. Alongside interdisciplinary/mutlidisciplinary/pluridisciplinary structures, I mostly consider my work in terms of transversality and radical inclusion.
Simon Gilbertson, Associate Professor
Post: University of Bergen, The Grieg Academy - Department of Music, Postbox 7805, 5020 Bergen
Visit: Nina Griegs vei 4, 5015, Bergen
Phone: +47 452 48980
Email: simon.gilbertson(at)uib.no
University of Bergen, Norway
The Grieg Academy – Department of Music
The Grieg Academy Music Therapy Research Centre