Deanna Hanson-Abromeit

Deanna Hanson-Abromeit, PhD, MT-BC is Professor of Music Therapy and Music Education at the University of Kansas (KU). She has been a board-certified music therapist (MT-BC) for 30 years, working with a range of populations in community and healthcare settings. Prior to her academic career, Dr. Hanson-Abromeit was a music therapist at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics where she developed one of the first clinical music therapy programs in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). She continues to work clinically in the University of Kansas Health System NICU providing music therapy services, training students and conducting music-based intervention research. Dr. Hanson-Abromeit also has a clinical and research background in other healthcare and community-based settings. 

Dr. Hanson-Abromeit has been on faculty at the University of Kansas since 2013. Prior to KU, she was on faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City from 2005-2013. Dr. Hanson-Abromeit teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Kansas. She currently teaches courses on human development and music learning and neuroscience and human behavior to undergraduates, and courses to graduate students that address concepts of theory and music-based intervention development, intervention research, and ethics in research.

Dr. Hanson-Abromeit actively mentors clinical and research experiences for undergraduate and graduate students as future music interventionists and applied researchers. Dr. Hanson-Abromeit leads the Baby-Music Intervention Research (babyMIR) Lab at KU with a focus on developing and strengthening theory, design, research, and practice of music interventions, particularly for infants and families, promoting translational research in a collaborative transdisciplinary framework. She was recently featured by the University of Kansas Public Affairs in the Created by KU storytelling platform. See https://create.ku.edu/music-therapy for this story and more information about Dr. Hanson-Abromeit’s research. 

Dr. Hanson-Abromeit developed the Therapeutic Function of Music (TFM) Plan as a tool to deepen our understanding of how and why music contributes to change within therapeutic experiences. The TFM Plan has expanded understanding of music-based intervention development with application to more effective music-based interventions. Dr. Hanson-Abromeit’s current funded research collaborations include music-based interventions that address infant language development, newborn withdrawal from in utero opioid exposure, early childhood emotion regulation development, health disparities during pregnancy, and people living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). She regularly presents at national and international conferences and publishes within a range of journals reaching an international audience. She has been the recipient of various awards, most recently the KU School of Music Outstanding Teaching Award (2023), the AMTA Research and Publication Award (2020) and the KU Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor Award (2019).

Dr. Hanson-Abromeit earned a Bachelor of Music in music therapy from the University of Iowa, A Master of Arts in music therapy from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in Music Education, with an emphasis in music therapy from the University of Kansas.