Raluca Matei specializes in musicians’ health and wellbeing from an interdisciplinary, real-world perspective. Her research thus far encompasses areas such as health education provision in higher music education (i.e. conservatoires); musicians’ physical and mental health; reasons for attending counselling among conservatoire students; and musicians’ health literacy. She is currently interested in the training of critical thinking as part of the conservatoire curriculum, as well as in questioning current assumptions in classical music.

 

In addition to her role as Lecturer in Health at the University of Bath (Professional Doctorate in Health), Raluca is also Programme Director for the unique Professional Doctorate in Occupational Health, Psychology, and Management, at Birkbeck, University of London. She is Graduate Member of the British Psychological Society (BPS), and Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She completed her AHRC-funded PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music, in Manchester, in February 2019. Raluca has first degrees in psychology and music, and an MSc in Health Psychology from University College London. Having been trained as a professional classical violinist, she also studied at the prestigious Menuhin Academy (Switzerland). In 2015, the British Psychological Society (Division of Health Psychology) awarded her both the Public Engagement Grant (for a series of workshops aimed at raising awareness of health psychology and behaviour change among orchestral players from the most prestigious London orchestras) and the Research Seminar Grant (for a roundtable-discussion aimed at encouraging cross-disciplinary collaborations between music psychology, health psychology and performing arts medicine).