Anna Zumbansen completed her clinical training in speech therapy in France (Université de Tours) and in Canada (University of Montreal). Before conducting research, she worked for several years as a speech language pathologist, during which she specialized in voice disorders affecting professional and amateur singers and in acquired neurological communication disorders. In 2015, she was awarded a doctorate in biomedical sciences from the University of Montreal. Her thesis, which dealt with choral singing and the use of melodic therapies for aphasia rehabilitation, was supported by several doctoral scholarships, both local and federal (NSERC). She then obtained a CIHR postdoctoral fellowship to conduct research at McGill University and the Jewish General Hospital of Montreal, where she examined non-invasive transcranial stimulation techniques (tDCS and TMS) as an adjunct to speech therapy for recovery from aphasia in the weeks and years after a stroke.
Professor Zumbansen has taught speech language pathology at various universities in Canada (University of Montreal, McGill University, Laval University) and in France (Tours, Paris, Besançon, Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges, Nantes, Poitiers, Lyon, and Montpellier), where she has supervised graduate students at the master’s level. With the help of several students, she has developed an assessment tool to document language changes in natural speech as a patient’s degenerative communication disorder evolves or as they undergo treatment. Professor Zumbansen arrived at the University of Ottawa in July 2020 and was named assistant director of the Music and Health Research Institute in 2021, where she heads a research initiative on choral singing practices and their effects on health and wellbeing.
Professor Zumbansen is accepting new students for thesis supervision.