Dr Deborah Green

Deborah is Co-Head of School, Creative Arts Therapies where she coordinates Research Practice and the final year of the Master of Arts in Arts Therapy.

She gained her Honours Degree in drama studies and her Postgraduate Diploma and Master’s degrees in education in South Africa where she worked in educational/community theatre, community development, lifeskills/AIDS education and counselling, and adult education within the South African University and Health sectors (1990 to 2004).

Following this she gained her Clinical Master of Arts in Arts Therapy through Whitecliffe College. She was awarded her Doctorate by the University of Auckland in 2016 for a thesis exploring her arts therapy practice during the Canterbury earthquakes.

She is an avid and active arts-based and autoethnographic researcher and has published papers and chapters on various aspects of her arts therapy and research work in a range of academic journals and books and has presented at conferences/symposia in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada and London.

In the scraps of time left over from her full academic life, Deborah also runs a small private practice through which she provides arts therapy and supervision. For leisure she takes to the hills around her hometown of Lyttelton, Christchurch, where she rock climbs, mountain bikes and flies her paraglider.