Marko Punkanen, PhD, is a music therapist, dance/movement therapist, and trauma psychotherapist who currently works as a music/dance-movement/psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice. He is actively involved with music therapy and dance/movement therapy training. Previously, he was a researcher in the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä. He was part of the research team which investigated the perception and preferences of emotions in music of depressed patients and the efficacy of improvisational, individual music therapy for depression.

Suvi Saarikallio, PhD, works as an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the Department of Music, University of Jyväskylä. Her research focuses on the psychosocial aspects of musical behaviour, including mood and emotion, personality, adolescent development, and wellbeing. She is an internationally acknowledged expert, particularly in research on music as emotional self-regulation, and has presented invited lectures and published articles in international peer-reviewed journals.

Outi Leinonen, MSc (Sports Science), trained in dance from childhood, within a variety of groups, and has performed and competed in Finland and internationally. As a dance teacher she has worked in youth camps in Finland, Brazil, Germany, and Croatia. ↵Currently, she is teaching in the Christian Dance School of Jyväskylä and dancing in the Campuksen Koonto Dance Team of yje University of Jyväskylä. Her Master’s thesis was a research project at the Department of Music, University of Jyväskylä, entitled ‘Movement analysis of depressed and non-depressed persons expressing emotions through spontaneous movement to music.’

Anita Forsblom, PhD, is a music therapist, supervisor, dance/movement therapist, and Fellow of the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and music, granted by the Association for Music and Imagery (USA). She is a private practitioner of music therapy and dance/movement therapy in Finland, and is interested in people’s experiences of music listening, and therapy processes in music therapy and dance movement therapy.

Independent

Geoff Luck, PhD (Keele University), has worked at the Department of Music of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and latterly as an Assistant Professor. In 2008 he was awarded a five-year Academy of Finland Research Fellowship to study the kinematics and dynamics of musical communication. This interdisciplinary project incorporated elements of biomechanics, psychology, and neuroscience to examine the role of body movement in both rhythmic and expressive musical communication. During his tenure in Jyväskylä, he carried out an extensive range of human-centred scientific studies on a range of topics, and has published more than fifty scientific works. A large proportion of his research has focused on quantifying, classifying, and predicting music-related behaviour using a wide range of statistical techniques.