Tessa Hearnes – Bio

Tessa Hearnes (DTAA Prov Prof DMT) is a practicing dance movement therapist with a specialisation in children and adults with intellectual disabilities. She has extensive experience in the disability field having worked as a specialist teacher in the UK; and in her current role as a Program Manager for a disability service provider in Australia. She is also a Community Fellow of the University of Melbourne’s Social Equity Institute through which she is researching methodologies for increasing client agency and voice in creative arts therapy assessment processes. Tessa has collaborated with Dr. Kim Dunphy previously in trialling the use of DMT-specific assessment frameworks and an app tool and recently contributed to an article on the subject in Frontiers in Psychology.