SPEAKERS: Professor Jane Edwards is Director of the Music & Health Research Group. and Course Director of the MA in Music Therapy at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. She is a Governor of the University of Limerick, and is the Guest Professor in Music Therapy at the University of the Arts in Berlin. A Founding Member of the International Association for Music & Medicine she is currently serving as inaugural President of this distinguished body.

Gregory Barz is a medical ethnomusicologist specializing in music and medicine in sub-Saharan Africa. His book Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda explores the use of music, dance, and drama as a medical intervention in the fight against AIDS by communities in Uganda, East Africa. He recently produced a recording with Smithsonian Folkways released as Singing for Life: Songs of Hope, Healing, and HIV/AIDS in Uganda that was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the “Best Traditional World Music” category. Barz’s current research projects involve socially conscious popular music related to HIV/AIDS in South Africa and continuing research on disease in Uganda and music and genocide in Rwanda. He is an associate professor of ethnomusicology and anthropology at Vanderbilt University.