This episode is Luke's conversation with Giorgos Tsiris, with a focus on spirituality and music therapy.

Born and raised in Athens, Greece, Giorgos moved to London in 2007 for his music therapy training. For the past 14 years, he has worked as a music therapist in diverse palliative care contexts for adults with incurable illnesses, their families and their local communities. He has developed collaborative community and intergenerational projects disrupting societal assumptions about death and dying, and his work has received national awards and informed similar arts initiatives internationally. Alongside his practice, Giorgos has a multifaceted research portfolio with extensive experience in issues pertaining to service evaluation and professionalisation in music therapy and within the wider field of arts and health, and in 2014 he co-authored two books on service evaluation and research ethics respectively. His doctorate focused on spirituality and its place in music therapy. Through an ethnographic lens, his research has brought to the fore the 'doing' of spirituality, its messiness and its performance within everyday music therapy contexts. Giorgos is the founding editor of Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, and in 2022 he co-chaired the 12th European Music Therapy Conference. He currently serves as Senior Lecturer in Music Therapy at Queen Margaret University and the Arts Lead at St Columba's Hospice Care, Edinburgh, Scotland.

References:

Bucar, L. (2022). Stealing my religion: Not just any cultural appropriation. Harvard University Press.

MacKian, S. (2012). Everyday spirituality: Social and spatial worlds of enchantment. Palgrave Macmillan.

Tsiris, G. (2017). Music therapy and spirituality: An international survey of music therapists' perceptions. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 26(4), 293-319.

Tsiris, G. (2018). Performing spirituality in music therapy: Towards action, context and the everyday (Doctoral dissertation, Goldsmiths, University of London). https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/23037/

Tsiris, G. (2021). Tracing spirituality in everyday music therapy contexts: Methodological reflections. In K. Hendricks & J. Boyce-Tillman & (Eds.), Authentic connection: Music, spirituality and wellbeing (Chapter 10). Peter Lang.

Tsiris, G., & Ansdell, G. (2019). Exploring the spiritual in music. Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, 11(1), 3-8. https://approaches.gr/tsiris-e20191124/