Dr. Michael Tan is a distinguished creative health practitioner and researcher with a rich interdisciplinary background in art and design, humanities, and social sciences. His ongoing inquiries include mental health literacy, end of life and loss, disability, medical humanities, and health justice.
As a leading advocate for arts & design for health development in Singapore and globally, he has mobilised his role as a creative health practitioner, researcher and educator to explore, interrogate, and imagine the culture of care through creative practice to promote human flourishing.
Some of his notable contributions to the field locally include a seminal paper on the State of Arts and Health Development Singapore; establishing the online Arts and Health Singapore Repository; and his numerous collaborations with stakeholders such as the Agency for Integrated Care, NAC, Duke-NUS Medical School and SingHealth. He is currently working with a team of eminent international colleagues in arts and health on a WHO Lancet Global Series commission where he is co-leading a systematic review exploring Arts participation as a health behaviour for Non-communicable Disease (NCD) prevention and health promotion.
His passion for nurturing a new generation of leaders in the field has led him to develop courses such as the Arts, Ageing and wellbeing module for the MSc Applied Gerontology, NTU, the MA in Design for Health at Sheffield Hallam University, and academic supervision (PhD, MFA, MA, BA) at the intersection of Creative practice, health, and wellbeing.
He has served as grant reviewer (e.g. The Leverhulme Trust, UK, AHRC, UK, NAC Singapore), PhD examiner, guest editor and reviewer for international peer-reviewed journals for work at the intersection of Creative practice, health, and wellbeing (e.g. Arts and Health, Wellcome Open Research, The Gerontologist, Frontiers). He also held appointments as external examiner and member of the advisory committee (e.g. Arts and Health at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital) and advisory board of Journal (Design for Health). For further information, please visit https://michaeltankb.net/
Doctor of Philosophy
University of Durham
Master of Arts in Photography and Urban Culture
Goldsmiths College, University of London
The Bachelor of Fine Arts
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago