Member of the Symposium

Suzanne B. Hanser, Ed.D., MT-BC is the founding chair of the Music Therapy Department at Berklee College of Music.  She is Past President of both the World Federation of Music Therapy and the National Association for Music Therapy.   Dr. Hanser is music therapist at the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrated Therapies and research associate at the Phyllis F. Cantor Center for Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.  She has also served as lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Hanser received a National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Aging  and was a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.  She has served as Program Director of the Alzheimer's Association, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, and Chair of the Music Therapy Department at University of the Pacific.  She received her music therapy training at The Florida State University and doctoral degree from Columbia University where she was a Fellow of the Center for the Behavioral Analysis of School Learning. 

Dr. Hanser is the author of The New Music Therapist's Handbook.  She has published numerous book chapters and written articles in such diverse journals as Nursing Home Medicine, Journal of Gerontology, Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing, Journal of Music Therapy,  Psychosomatics, Pediatrics, Journal of the International Association of Music for the Handicapped, Arts in Psychotherapy and Music Therapy Perspectives, among others.  She has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the World Congress for Music Therapy and has presented at many international conferences.  Recently, she was named by the Boston Globe as one of eleven Bostonians Changing the World.

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