Vicky Karkou, PhD

Vicky Karkou is the Director of the Research Centre for Arts and Wellbeing and an internationally known academic and researcher in the arts and arts psychotherapies with external funding successes of over £10 million, over 100 peer reviewed articles, 5 authored/edited/co-edited books and numerous other publications.

She is involved in the ERA study, the largest arts therapies randomised controlled trial in the UK funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). More recently, she received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to lead the Arts4Us project, the largest collaborative project in the UK (£2.5 million) to develop accessible place-based arts and arts psychotherapies interventions for children and young people. This is built on prior funding from AHRC that involved scaling up the Arts for the Blues model, an evidence-based creative group psychotherapy for people with depression.

Vicky is a founding member of the International Creative Arts Therapies Research Alliance, working on internationally commissioned projects from the WHO Arts and Health Office. With funding from the Wellcome Trust and collaboration with colleagues from India and the Caribbean, she supervised a systematic review on arts interventions to support the mental health of helping professionals. She has received funding from the European Union on projects relating to e-learning for young people and creative interventions for cancer care. Other funding streams include the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Arts Council, national and international charities, professional associations and Clinical Commissioning Groups.