The MHRI, to be announced by the University of Ottawa in September, is an innovative research institute at the intersection of music, health sciences, social sciences, engineering, and medicine.
“Working across different research cultures is something I began cultivating 20 years ago, when I created the Piano Pedagogy Research Laboratory,” says Professor Gilles Comeau, a researcher at the University of Ottawa’s School of Music.
Gilles Comeau, the driving force behind this interdisciplinary project, has been appointed Director of the Institute for five years. He will lead the Institute, with the support of Associate Director of the Institute, and Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Anna Zumbansen, to advance fundamental, applied, and clinical research about the impact of musical interventions on neurological or bipolar affective disorders, depression, anxiety, and physiological limitations, among others.
Born out of Comeau’s vision, the new Institute will explore the interactions of music with sensory, physical, psychological, and cognitive health, to develop innovative practices and solutions that can improve the well-being of individuals and communities. It is aligned with the research that Comeau undertook at the helm of the Musicians’ Wellness Centre.
With its base in the Faculties of Arts and Health Sciences, the MHRI was created in partnership with Carleton University, the Bruyère Research Institute, the University of Ottawa’s Institute of Mental Health Research at the Royal, the Ottawa Hospital (Education) and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), as well as with the participation of the Lotus Centre for Special Music Education.
This partnership approach, which combines the concept of music in its diversity of forms, genres, and cultures, with that of health in its broadest sense, including its cultural and societal determinants, will be articulated around five interconnected research areas. It will benefit from the multiplicity of skills and knowledge that practitioners, policy-makers and community partners, will bring to strengthen the study of the therapeutic and inclusive impact of music.