Deanna Hanson-Abromeit

Deanna Hanson-Abromeit, PhD, MT-BC is an Associate Professor of Music Therapy and Music Education at the University of Kansas (KU). She has 27 years of clinical experience primarily with infants in medical and community-based settings and has been a music therapy educator for 17 years. She leads the baby-Music Intervention Research (MIR) lab at KU with a focus on developing and strengthening theory, design, research, and practice of music interventions particularly for infants and families. The baby-MIR lab endeavors to promote translational research in a collaborative transdisciplinary framework. Dr. Hanson-Abromeit developed the Therapeutic Function of Music Plan as a framework to deepen understanding of how and why music functions as an active agent for change. She actively mentors research experiences for undergraduate and graduate students as future music interventionists and applied researchers. Dr. Hanson-Abromeit is a board-certified music therapist and a member of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) and International Congress of Infant Studies. She was the 2020 recipient of the AMTA Research and Publication Award and the 2019 recipient of the KU Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor Award.