Ghada Abdel Rahim participates in the IAMM Global Café as the only representative of Egypt

The IAMM Global Café has published, through its website, iammonline, an invitation to open discussion via Zoom app, for all those interested in music and medicine and their relationship with each other to participate in the association members in a dialogue about the potential intersection between music and medicine / health in the African continent.

According to the report published on the Association's website, these sessions will come from the association's efforts to organize a virtual global forum through which they meet every two months with all members includes Dr. Ghada Abdel Rahim Ali, who represents Egypt. These virtual sessions will start on April 16-17/2021.

IAMM Global Café (IGC) is a virtual networking event for IAMM members across the world. These Cafes will meet every other month, hosted by members of IAMM's Committee on Global Reporting. The next IGC focuses on the possible intersection of music and medicine/health in Africa. Nsamu will host a panel of practitioners actively engaged in music and medicine/health in different African countries. Participants will have the opportunity to converse with the co-hosts, as well as each other. All IAMM members are welcome to attend these Global Cafes. Please join with a cup of coffee, tea, or your choice of libation, and enjoy the conversation!   

HOST

Nsamu Moonga received his B.A. with a major in Psychological Counselling from the University of South Africa and MMus Therapy at the University of Pretoria. Nsamu is a licenced multidisciplinary music therapist born in Zambia. He is a classically trained singer and enjoys dancing. Growing up in Britain's post-colony and experiencing ambivalent feelings towards his cultural identities, he developed interests in holistic anti-oppressive practice, Ethno-Eco-Psycho-spiritualities and lifelong development, learning, and critical theory-informed research. Grounded in anti-oppressive and non-interference practice, he works with people exploring health and lifestyle choices, medical complications, human sexualities and gender, spiritual experiences, psychosocial support, and learning enhancement. He enjoys long-distance running and writing mystical poetry. He is a foodie, enjoys mentoring youth, and loves being an uncle.

CO-HOSTS

Dr Ava Avalos MD works as an HIV specialist physician, and AIDS activist in Botswana. In addition to clinical care, she focuses her medical research on optimizing anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS patients, preventing both ART failure and the development of drug resistance, and improving public health programs' implementation. She currently leads the Advanced HIV Care Initiative, is a member of the Botswana HIV & T.B. Clinical Care Guidelines Committee, a Research Associate of the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Initiative, serves as Chair on the Board of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) and was recently appointed to the Editorial Board of the Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine.  In 2018, she was an ordained Dharma Teacher in the tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.  She also keeps up with her high spirited smooth-haired fox terrier, paints and teaches yoga and dance.   

Dr Cecilia Durojaye is a researcher and musicologist interested in emotion perception and responses in Africa's music and cross-cultural music cognition. Her current research project employs various experimental and qualitative methods to explore the relationship between music, language, and emotion in the Nigerian dundun talking drum's perception. She graduated with a PhD from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2019. Between 2019 and 2020, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Germany. In January 2020, she was appointed as Adjunct Faculty at the Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, USA. She emerged as the winner of the African Studies Review best African-based dissertation award. Cecilia is a lover of plants, a singer and dancer and watches history and crime documentaries when not studying or conceiving research ideas. She sleeps when she can.

Dr Bibian Kalinde is a researcher and university lecturer at the University of Zambia. Bibian completed her Master's Degree and her PhD at the University of Pretoria. Before then, she acquired BMus from Kenyatta University. She teaches general music courses and classroom instruments to undergraduate students. Her research interests are in music education in tertiary and early childhood education. She is the founder of Sauti Music Education and Consultancy Services, aiming to provide early music learning to children under 15 years and offer guidance on performance. Her future pursuits include music performance outside the classroom and ways of incorporating informal and non-formal teaching music ways into formal learning settings.

Bethan Lee Shrubsole currently works as a music therapist at a hospital in N'djamena, Chad, supported by a Christian development agency. She provides music therapy services for children with developmental disabilities and helps in-patients in their recovery through music and play.  She collaborates with Chadian musicians on a project whose purpose is unfolding gradually. She has worked in northern Uganda, setting up a peripatetic music therapy service that served children who had been abducted or traumatized during the decade-long rebel war. She facilitated graduate volunteer placements, trained and supervised many Ugandans as music counsellors/facilitators and extended the project to include art therapy. Her other work in Uganda included training a Ugandan creative arts counsellor over three years to support the learning and social/emotional skills of children with learning disabilities within a mainstream school. Bethan is interested in integrating music into the mainstream health system in Chad. She trained as a music therapist graduating with her MMus Therapy at Cambridgeshire in the U.K

Professor Anthony V.E Mereni came to music therapy through musicology and music psychology, and aesthetics. He undertook his practical work under Frau Dr Posch at the Salzburg Neurological Hospital in Austria. He has worked in clinical practice and as a music therapy lecturer in Florence (Italy) under Ce's aegis. Tom - the central body controlling Music therapy awareness and training in the province of Tuscany in Italy. He is a member British Society for Music Therapy, an Honorary Fellow of Imaginative Music therapy (Trento- Italy), the co-founder of the (APSI) Association for Psycho-Therapy and Holistic Science (Vioterra- Italy) and the founder of the Music Therapy Association of Nigeria (MUTAN). He runs the Gemma -Regis Center for Music Therapy, which serves children with cerebral palsy, profound and multiple disabilities, and other complex psychiatric diagnoses. They work with small groups and individual music therapy sessions. Besides, he conducts music therapy seminars, workshops and other practical duties.  He has furthermore offered music therapy consultancy at Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba. He is currently a music therapy professor at the Music Unit of the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos, Akoka-Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria.

Dr. Ghada Abdel Rahim is a psychology professor at the Faculty of Specific Education at Cairo University. She was the first Egyptian researcher to tackle Music Education Psychology and earn a PhD in this major in Egypt. As an academic researcher, Ghada mainly focuses on the impact of music on children's behaviours and how music can develop and change their characters. She focuses on particular cases of children, i.e. refugees, the homeless and those with learning difficulties. My focus takes a broader scope extending to bullying and how music can help in this regard. My ultimate goal in all cases is how to improve the quality of life for children through music.