English 
French As part of the podcast series, “ArtsAbly in Conversation,” Diane Kolin interviewed Dr. Chi Yhun Lo, a Senior Research Associate in the SMART Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, in Canada.
This post presents the resources that Chi Yhun Lo mentioned during the conversation.
Chi Yhun Lo
Chi Yhun Lo, PhD, is a Senior Research Associate who joined the SMART Lab in April 2022. He explores the intersection between music, hearing, deafness, and health. Chi completed a PhD at Macquarie University that explored the benefits of music for deaf and hard-of-hearing children; and his first postdoctoral position was at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation investigating the stigma faced by cochlear implant recipients.
Visit Chi Yhun Lo’s Linkedin page
Below the resources, at the end of the page, you can find some articles co-published with Chi Yhun Lo.
SMART Lab
The SMART Lab is an interdisciplinary research team at Toronto Metropolitan University. We are engaged with basic and applied research questions at the intersection of music, mind and action. Our research foci include music cognition, hearing science, and health and wellbeing. Click here to learn more about our philosophical and methodological approach to research.
Learn more about the SMART Lab
Parents of Deaf Children (PODC)
Parents of Deaf Children is an Australian non-profit organization, supporting families with babies, children and teenagers with hearing loss in NSW and the ACT. The organization offers a range of information, support and capacity building services for parents and carers, respecting the method or methods of communication that the family has chosen for their child.
Felicity Bleckly
Felicity went slowly deaf from around the age of 9 and was living deaf by the time she was about 35 years old. There were no solutions for her loss until at around age 52, when she had a Cochlear Implant. Felicity is the deafness editor for “Bella Online, the Voice of women.”
Visit Felicity Bleckly’s website
Asphyxia
Asphyxia is an artist and writer who lives on a small farm near Byron Bay, Australia. She is the author of Future Girl (in Australia) and The Words in My Hands (in North America) which won the Readings Young Adult prize has been selected as Kirkus’ best YA fiction for 2021, as well as scooping up many other awards. The book is the art journal of Deaf sixteen-year-old Piper, an instructional call to arms, and an exploration of Deaf experience. She is also the author of the junior fiction series, The Grimstones. Deaf since the age of three, she learned to sign when she was eighteen, which changed her life. She is now a Deaf activist, sharing details of Deaf experience and raising awareness of oppression of Deaf people and what they can do to change this. Her free online Auslan course has over 15,000 students.
Amplio
Amplio is a program created by Asphyxia, to find ways to make music more accessible to Deaf people. Most of us listen to music alone because current technology doesn’t make it easy to share music with our people. Amplio offers the visual information you need to keep in time with the music, and a way for you to hear clearer sound while hearing people get to hear what they usually hear.
The SingWell Project
The SingWell Project is an interdisciplinary network dedicated to investigating and advocating for the power of group singing for people living with communication challenges (CCs). SingWell considers group singing to be a meaningful social activity that has the potential to support communication function and social wellbeing.
Learn more about the SingWell Project
Catherine McMahon
Professor McMahon is a clinical Audiologist and Director of Audiology at MQ Health at Macquarie University Sydney in Australia. Catherine is also a senior scientist and project leader of the HEARing Co-operative Research Centre, the largest translational hearing research group in Australia. Her research aims to better understand the interactions between cognition on auditory perception in individuals with hearing loss, and to understand the changes that occur with hearing devices and training programs. Ultimately, she hopes to provide clinicians with improved tools to differentiate between speech perception problems that arise from auditory disruptions or cognitive limitations and to provide clinical tools to remediate this.
See Catherine McMahon’s Macquarie University profile
Valerie Looi
Valerie Looi is an internationally recognized expert in the field of Music Perception of Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid. She holds a PhD in Audiology as well as postgraduate business qualifications, and brings 22 years of experience in research management, including 10 in senior leadership/management roles and 10 years working across Asia-Pacific. She is currently an Australian Clinical Consultant to a US-based Hearing Therapeutics start up, and Project Manager for a Global Health medical research Institute.
See Valerie Looi’s ResearchGate profile
Bill Thompson
Bill Thompson is a Distinguished Professor of the Department of Psychology, and Director of the Music, Sound and Performance Lab at Macquarie University. He completed his honours BSc from McGill University, and an MA and PhD from Queen’s University, Canada. His PhD thesis concerned perceptual aspects of Bach Chorale music. After finishing his PhD, he worked in Stockholm at the Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, Royal Institute of Technology, then at the Conservatorium of Music Research Centre, Sydney. Prior to his appointment at Macquarie, he held academic positions at University of Queensland, York University (Canada), and University of Toronto. During his 18 years in Toronto, he held leadership positions as Head of the Psychology Dept (York), Director of Communication, Culture and Information Technology (U of Toronto), and Director of the Institute for Communication and Culture (U of Toronto).
See Bill Thompson’s Macquarie University profile
Rory McLeod
Rory McLeod is a musician, entrepreneur, and concert designer who takes joy in creating authentic human connections through shared musical experiences. As Executive and Artistic Director of Xenia Concerts, he works with health experts, members of the community, presenting partners, and performing artists to co-create concert experiences that are inclusive for people that would otherwise face barriers to attending live music events. Determined to widen the circle of inclusion in the performing arts, Rory is currently pursuing his Master’s in Inclusive Design at OCAD University. Rory is also the founder and Co-director of Pocket Concerts, an organization that presents intimate concert experiences in alternative venues all over the GTA. Rory believes that music is a catalyst to emotional connection: he brings an enthusiastic spirit of collaboration to his performances in chamber music festivals across North America and with the Canadian Opera Company and National Ballet Orchestras.
Rory McLeod has also been a guest of ArtsAbly in Conversation, in episode 4.
Xenia Concerts
Xenia Concerts was launched in 2014 as a pilot program that aimed to address a barrier in the arts: people living with autism are often not welcome at concerts because they tend to express themselves in ways that are often frowned upon at traditionally organized events. Xenia Concerts designs and presents accessible concerts for young music-lovers who face barriers to inclusion.
Laverne Cox
Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBT advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, making her the first trans woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S. broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS’s Doubt.
Ben Brown
Ben Brown is a deaf percussionist and composer. He is a mover and shaker. He is the founder of Music And Movement Mondays (MAMM). As a drummer, he has received a Juno Award with his group, Pugs and Crows. As a composer he has created scores for both Dance and Film. He regularly collaborates with dance artists and choreographers. Currently, he is exploring principles of sound felt in the body, as taught by his mentor, deaf/master percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, and researching a series of designed percussion instruments crafted by Roxanne Nesbitt. With these, he is trying to push the boundaries of drumming by using movement to communicate the energy of sound—helping an audience hear differently by creating and breaking expectations for a sound through gesture.
References
Lo, C. Y., Zendel, B., Baskent, D., Boyle, C., Coffey, E., Gagne, E., Habibi, A., Harding, E., Keijzer, M., Kreutz, G., Maat, B., Schurig, E., Sharma, M., Dang, C., Gilmore, S., Henshaw, H., McKay, C., Good, A., & Russo, F. A. (2024) Speech-in-noise, psychosocial, and heart rate variability outcomes of group singing or audiobook club interventions for older adults with unaddressed hearing loss: a SingWell Project multisite, randomized controlled trial, registered report protocol. PLOS ONE, 19(12): e0314473
Read the article
Bleckly, F., Lo, C. Y., Rapport, F., Clay-Williams, R. (2024) Music perception, appreciation, and participation in post-lingually deafened adults and cochlear implant users: A systematic literature review. Trends in Hearing, 28
Read the article
Bonventre, C., Lloyd, S., Boisvert, I., Campos, J., Friedner, M., Kolb, R., Lo, C. Y., Mills, M., & Neal, K. (2023) Reassessing what matters in experiences with cochlear implants. CorpusUL
Read the article
Lo, C. Y., Looi, V., Thompson, W. F., & McMahon, C. M. (2022) Beyond audition: Psychosocial benefits of music training for children with hearing loss. Ear and Hearing, 43(1), 128–142.
Read the article
Lo, C. Y., Looi, V., Thompson W. F., McMahon, C. M. (2022) Can Music Training Improve Listening Skills For Children With Hearing Loss?
Read the article
Lo, C. Y., Looi, V., Thompson, W. F., & McMahon, C. M. (2020) Music training for children with sensorineural hearing loss improves speech-in-noise perception. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(6), 1990–2015.
Read the article