Shaun McNiff

Who they are

The credentials are set out here from the public record, because the book this vault holds states them only on its back cover.

He took an AB in History at Fordham College in 1968, and studied painting at the Art Students League of New York the same year. His MA in Psychology is from Goddard College, 1972, with studies supervised by Rudolf Arnheim, and his PhD, in the Psychology of Art, is from Union Institute in 1977, with the dissertation Motivation in Art. That is a PhD rather than an EdD, from a non-traditional individualised doctoral institution. Mount Mary College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 1993.

He worked as an art therapist at Danvers State Hospital from 1970 to 1974. At Lesley University he taught the first art therapy course in 1973, established the Expressive Therapies graduate programmes in 1974, and founded and directed the Institute for the Arts and Human Development from 1974 to 1988. He was appointed Lesley's first ever University Professor in 2002, held the title until 2021, and has been University Professor Emeritus since. He was Interim Dean of Lesley College from 2006 to 2010, and Provost and Dean at Endicott College from 1997 to 2002.

He is a past president of the American Art Therapy Association. His own curriculum vitae gives 2001 to 2003, with president-elect from 1999, and publisher biographies confirm the past presidency without years. The exact years could not be corroborated from an association document and are carried here as curriculum-vitae sourced. He received the association's Honorary Life Member Award, its highest honour, in 1997, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Journal of Applied Arts and Health in 2019, and a Distinguished Service Award from the International Association for Creative Arts in Education and Therapy in 2022.

Two neutral facts about the public record, recorded because they place him accurately and neither is a criticism. No ATR, ATR-BC or other clinical registration appears in his curriculum vitae or in any publisher or institutional biography, and he is consistently styled with the doctorate alone; the Honorary Life Member award is an association honour rather than a clinical credential. And on art-based research, the term was coined by Elliot Eisner in a Stanford conference presentation in 1993, with McNiff's contribution being the book-length definition and establishment of the methodology in 1998. A founding figure of the methodology, not the originator of the term.

One thing to his credit that is easy to miss. In Art Heals he states plainly that he has never called creative arts therapists shamans nor presented himself as one, and that his interest is in the shaman as an idea rather than in literal identification. That framing does real work against the appropriation risk in the cultural chapters of that book.

A search of the published record found nothing adverse and none is reported here. A reported birth date could not be traced to an authoritative primary source and is not carried.

Key papers

McNiff, S. (1998). Art-Based Research. The book-length definition and establishment of the methodology. The term itself was coined by Elliot Eisner at a Stanford conference presentation in 1993, and this page credits him for it.

McNiff, S. (2004). Art Heals. Shambhala. The book this vault has read in full. It is a retrospective collection of essays, most of which map onto his own earlier journal articles, and it contains no outcome study. Its subtitle, its comparative claim in chapter 27 and its use of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research material are handled in the book hub's quarantine table and are not repeated here.

He has published extensively across expressive arts therapy over a long career. The vault records these two titles, so these are the two listed, and this page does not claim to be his bibliography. Publisher details for Art-Based Research are not recorded in the vault and are not supplied here.

No peer-reviewed academic review of Art Heals could be found in any journal, and none of the usual trade review notices was located either, though those sit behind paywalls. That is recorded as not found rather than as disproven.

Key ideas

The expressive and intermodal branch. He built the first graduate training for it, at Lesley in 1974, which is where the tradition's professional line begins.

Art-based research. Making art as a method of inquiry rather than only as an object of study. Eisner named it in 1993; McNiff defined it at book length in 1998.

The studio model. Working in a shared studio rather than in a clinical dyad, which is the practical form the approach takes.

Dialoguing with images. Treating an image as something to be addressed rather than only interpreted.

Expressive arts therapy and art therapy are distinct. He originates the training for the first and has held the senior offices of the second, and both halves of that sentence are needed to place him accurately.

He declines the shaman identification explicitly. Part Five of Art Heals states that he has never called creative arts therapists shamans nor presented himself as one.

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