Core Faculty Member
Margo Fuchs Knill
Ph.D.
Margo Fuchs Knill is Professor, Dean of the Division of Arts, Health and Society at the European Graduate School EGS, and also a founding faculty member. She is a former Ass. Professor at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.
She has been a psychotherapist ASP since 1995, a registered poetry therapist and mentor supervisor RPT as of 1993, certified Expressive Arts therapist and a licensed mental health counselor since 1992. Margo Fuchs Knill works in private practice and teaches internationally at cooperating universities, as well as partner institutes in Europe, Russia, USA, Latin America, India, Turkey, China Hong Kong.
Prior to her studies in education, special education, and psychology at the University of Zurich, she worked as an elementary school teacher and special education teacher in Switzerland. She trained as a Gestalttherapist at the Fritz Perls Institute, Germany and also trained with Ruth Cohn, WILL, TZI, in the Theme Centered Interactional Approach.
In 1979 she immigrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts for her postgraduate studies (CAGS) in Intermodal Expressive Arts Therapy at Lesley University. She was lucky to study with the original faculty of the Arts Institute. Her primary mentors were Shaun McNiff, Elizabeth McKim, Norma Canner and Paolo J. Knill. She completed her Ph.D. in Psychology and the Arts at Union Institute.
Margo Fuchs Knill is a poet, writer and visual artist. Her early drawings and paintings are published in her book Season-ing Life. She is a member of A*dS (Swiss association for authors). Together with H. Barba and P. Knill, she is the co-author of Minstrels of Soul: Intermodal Expressive Therapy and a contributor to Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy. Her latest textbook, co-authored by Sally Atkins is Poetry in Expressive Arts. Supporting Resilience through Poetic Writing (2020). She published numerous poetry books, her latest is Von nun an (2019).
Her teaching experience encompasses a wide range of areas: developmental psychology, health and illness (psychopathology and salutogenesis), language and discourse, supervision, advanced clinical training, MA research colloquium, poetry, creative writing, biographic work, introduction to Intermodal Expressive Arts, the Expressive Arts' philosophical base and Expressive Arts methods.
Her primary interest is in demonstrating how poetry in expressive arts serves as another manner of thinking, a "weapon of peace", and a medium to instill hope. It is her passion to help students develop an Arts-oriented and Arts-based attitude as professionals, and to expand their own style.