Dr Peter Lovatt
Hello. My name is Dr Peter Lovatt and I’m an academic Psychologist. Before studying psychology I was a professional dancer. I combined psychology and dance in 2008 and created the Dance Psychology Lab to study, scientifically, the impact of movement on a range of human behaviours and thinking. I have since written two books and authored several academic peer-reviewed papers on the subject. Now, I work with organisations to create and deliver keynote experiences, which demonstrate the impact of movement on people’s social connection, their thinking and problem solving, their emotional intelligence and on their physical state too. These movement related experiences help people and organisations to make changes, and to deal with evolving professional and personal landscapes.
I created the Doctor Dance Academy as a place to learn about the psychology of dance and movement, and how it can be applied in different settings.
To help you find your way through my “about” page, I’ve chunked it in to sections. Click on the links to go my EDUCATION, TEACHING & RESEARCH CAREER, BOOKS & ACADEMIC PAPERS, TV, MEDIA & LIVE PERFORMANCES, and PHOTOS
Education
PhD in Psychology
I have a PhD in Experimental Cognitive Psychology from the University of Essex. Awarded in 1998.
Reflection: My thesis looked at the relationship between working memory and language and specifically looked at how people remember short sequences of words. I was always fascinated by the fact that I could easily remember long sequences of dance moves, but I found remembering sequences of words much more difficult.
MSc in Neural Computation
I have a MSc in Neural Computation from the Centre for Cognitive and Computational Neurosciences (CCCN) at the University of Stirling. Awarded in 1994.
Reflection: The CCCN was an exciting place to be in 1993-1994. We spent our time learning about artificial neural network models of the mind, and then applying them to real-world issues, such as brain injury, face recognition, memory and language processing. As a psychologist, it was great to study alongside computer scientists, mathematicians and philosophers.
BSc in Psychology & English
I have a BSc (Hons.) in Psychology and English from the Roehampton Institute. My degree was awarded by the University of Surrey in 1993.
Reflection: I studied at Froebel College, which I loved. This was my first experience of university life and I lived it to the full. I became president of the college drama society and took a play, Lysistrata, up to the Edinburgh Fringe. I danced a lot too. My final year research project was an experimental study of the neuropsychological condition known as afferent dysgraphia.
Dance & Musical Theatre Training
I have a three-year diploma in Musical Theatre from the Guildford School of Acting.
Reflection: When I left school at 16, having failed most written exams, I went to East Herts College to study Theatre and Creative Arts. From there I went on to the Guildford School of Acting, where I studied Dance and Musical Theatre from 1983-1986.
Teaching and Research Career
From 1994 until 2021 I moved through the academic ranks.
University of Essex (1994-1996)
I started my teaching and research career at the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex, where I worked as a University Teaching Fellow while studying for my PhD in Experimental Cognitive Psychology. I also taught some open access courses for the University’s Centre for Continuing Education.
Reflection: It was at Essex that I learned about people’s different motivations for learning, and how to adapt my teaching to meet these different motivations. For example, whereas the undergraduate students were typically focused on learning for deep understanding, the open access students typically wanted to learn something interesting, and to be entertained. The Centre for Continuing Education used to put on all-day Saturday courses, where anyone who was interested could come along and attend several hours of Psychology lectures. I remember once teaching in the 2pm slot and watching learners nod-off one by one in the post-lunch, dark, warm, lecture theatre. It occurred to me then that as people are very unlikely to learn while they are asleep that I needed to do something different, as a teacher, to keep people awake. Of course, helping people stay awake and alert was also important in academic lectures too.
University of Greenwich (1996-1998)
In 1996 I took up the full-time post of Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Greenwich, where I taught undergraduate students in memory, language, attention, thinking and problem-solving. I also taught some courses in Psychological Research Methods and supervised final year research projects.
Reflection: I enjoyed my time at the University of Greenwich. It was a challenging period because in addition to working full-time, I was still working on my PhD at the University of Essex and commuting 150 miles every day.
University of Cambridge (1998-2000)
I moved from the University of Greenwich to the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge in 1998, where I took up the post of Senior Research Associate. My role at Cambridge was to try to understand, as a cognitive psychologist, how the human brain learns multiple languages. We did this using experimental methods and computational models of language learning systems. I also taught on post-graduate courses and worked on the supervisory teams for several PhD candidates.
Reflection: I loved the opportunities that being part of the University of Cambridge offered. We used to hold an informal extracurricular seminar series in the local pub called Philosophical Musings, where we discussed the nature of language and the human mind. I enjoyed college dinners where I’d find myself talking to people who were historians, engineers, physicists or specialists in 19th century poetry. I loved the libraries and the dressing up too.
Vox Generation (2000-2001)
I took an academic sabbatical in 2000 and worked in industry as a Principal Research Scientist for Vox Generation. The aim of the company was to create a speech recognition system which could understand natural language commands and complete tasks over the phone. I headed up a small team of research scientists, worked closely with developers and between us we submitted patent applications and created a telephony-based platform. We were way ahead of our time.
Reflection: The contrast between working in industry and working in academia was extreme. There was no more time for philosophical musings in the pub. Now we had to chase funding from investors, do research which was tightly constrained around the priorities of system developers, create intellectual property on which we could apply for a patent, and develop products that added value for customers. It was a fascinating experience.
Kingston University (2001-2004) & Birkbeck College (2001-2003)
After my sabbatical I returned to academia as a full-time Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology at Kingston University, where I was also the Deputy Head of the School of Social Sciences, and a part-time Lecturer in the Psychology of Language at the Department of Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Reflection: Teaching at Birkbeck College was fantastic. Lectures are held in the evenings and students are typically mature and very often arrived already holding a degree in a different subject. The students at Birkbeck were highly motivated, as many were holding down full-time jobs during the day and studying in their spare time. I enjoyed the mix of teaching across different institutions and trying to meet the learning needs of different student groups.
University of Hertfordshire (2004-2019)
I took up the post of Reader (now sometimes known as Assoc. Professor) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in 2004. It was here that I was able to set up the Dance Psychology Lab to study dance from a psychological, scientific, perspective. I developed and taught courses in the Psychology of Performing Arts and taught at all levels of undergraduate and post graduate psychology. I also supervised PhD students and worked with post-doctoral colleagues. I carried out research on the impact of movement in people living with Parkinson’s disease and also on the relationship between dance and self-esteem, dance and hormones, and on the relationship between dance and thinking. The favourite part of my role here was to be actively involved in the Public Understanding of Science, which meant that I had to take science outside of the university and engage people wherever they were.
Reflection: I was fortunate at the University of Hertfordshire to have a Head of Department who, when I pitched the idea of setting up a Dance Psychology Lab, was fully supportive. It enabled me to develop courses and carry out the research that I had always wanted to do. This then led to my role in the Public Understanding of Science, where I had the opportunity to create and deliver content on TV, on stage, at science festivals and on the radio – all of which I loved.
Royal Ballet School, London (2017-2021)
I created and delivered two courses for the Royal Ballet School on the Psychology of Dance. One for students in the Upper School and another for student-teachers. I also supervised student dissertations on the Psychology of Dance and spoke at Staff Awaydays.
Reflection: Working in a high-level vocational training environment was really stimulating. Teaching psychology to some of the best young ballet dancers from around the world was a real privilege, as was working with the trainee teachers too. The culture within the school was extremely rigid, with strict uniform, thought and behavioural controls in place. Across my teaching career it has been interesting to see how the culture of different learning environments, and the confidence of the students, changes the way people interact and learn.
Books & Academic Papers
Books
The Dance Cure by Peter Lovatt
The Dance Cure: The surprising secret to being smarter, stronger, happier, by Peter Lovatt. First published in the UK in 2020 by Short Books and in the USA in 2021 by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins.
The Dance Cure was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Reader’s Award for non-fiction. It was listed as one of the best books of 2020 by The Guardian newspaper, is listed as one of the best dance books of all time by BookAuthority and is currently the #17 best seller in dance on Amazon. The Dance Cure was written for a general audience.
Dance Psychology by Peter Lovatt
Dance Psychology: The science of dance and dancers, by Peter Lovatt. First published in the UK in 2018 by Lulu Press.
Dance Psychology was written for an academic audience.
Academic Papers
- Rose, D., Ott, L., Guerin, S., Annett,L. E., Lovatt, P. J., & Delevoye-Turrell, Y., (2021). A general procedure to measure the pacing of body movements timed to music and metronome in younger and older adults. Scientific Reports, (2021) 11:3264 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-82283-4
- Rose, D., Mullensiefen, D., Lovatt, P.J., & Orgs, G. (2020). The Goldsmiths Dance Sophistication Index (Gold-DSI): A Psychometric Tool to Assess Individual Differences in Dance Experience. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts
- Karageorghis, C. I., Rose, D., Annett, L.E., Bek, J., Bottoms, L., Lovatt, P. J., Poliakoff, E., Schultz, B. G., Whyatt, C. P., Young, W. R., & Delevoye-Turrell, Y. N. (2020). The BASES Expert Statement on the Use of Music for Movement among People with Parkinson’s. The Sport and Exercise Scientist, Issue 63.
- Rose, D., Cameron, D. J., Lovatt, P. J., Grahn, J. & Annett, L. E. (2020). Comparison of spontaneous motor tempo during finger tapping, toe tapping and stepping on the spot in people with and without Parkinson's disease. Journal of Movement Disorders, 13(1), 47-57.
- Rose, D., Delevoye-Turrell, Y., Ott, L., Annett, L. E. & Lovatt, P. J. (2019). Music and metronomes differentially impact motor timing in people with and without Parkinson's disease: Effects of slow, medium and fast tempi on entrainment and synchronization performance in finger tapping, toe tapping and stepping on the spot. Parkinson's Disease.
- Lewis, C., Annett, L.E., Davenport, S., Hall, A. and Lovatt, P. (2016). Mood changes following social dance sessions in people with Parkinson's disease. Journal of Health Psychology, 21(4), 483-492.
- Lovatt, P. J. (2016). This is why we dance. BBC Science Focus, 302, 62-67.
- Lewis, C., Lovatt, P. and Kirk, E. (2015). Many hands make light work: The facilitative role of gesture in verbal improvisation. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 17, 149-157
- Lovatt, P. J. (2013). Dance Psychology: The Power of Dance across Behaviour and Thinking. Psychology Review, 19 (1), 18-21.
- Lovatt, P. J. (2013). Body, Thinking & Dance. The Psychologist, 26 (11).
- Lovatt, P. (2011). Dance confidence, age and gender. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 668-672.
- Williams, J. N. & Lovatt, P. (2005). Phonological Memory and Rule Learning. Language Learning, 55, s1, 177-233.
- Joiner, R., Gavin, J., Duffield, J., Brosnan, M., Crook, C., Durndell, A., Maras, P., Miller, J., Scott, A.J. & Lovatt, P. (2005). Gender, Internet Identification, and Internet Anxiety: Correlates of Internet Use. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 8(4), 371-378.
- Lovatt, P.J., Avons, S. E. & Masterson, J. (2002). Output decay in immediate serial recall: Speech time revisited. Journal of Memory and Language, 46 (1), 227-243.
- Lovatt, P. J. & Avons, S. E. (2001). Re-evaluating the word-length effect. In (Ed.) J. Andrade Working Memory in Perspective. Psychology Press.
- Lovatt, P.J., Avons, S. E. & Masterson, J. (2000). The word-length effect and disyllabic words. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 53A, 1-22.
- Lovatt, P.J. (1998). Immediate Serial Recall and the word-length effect. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis. University of Essex.
- Lovatt, P. J. & Bairaktaris, D. (1995). A computational account of phonologically mediated free recall. In (Eds.) L. Smith and P. Hancock. Neural Computation and Psychology. Springer Verlag.
TV, Media & Theatre Shows
My work on the Psychology of Dance has been reported on TV, radio and in the national and international press, through which I became known as Doctor Dance.
TV & Radio
I’ve been invited to appear on many popular TV shows, including Darcey Bussell: Dancing to Happiness (BBC2), Strictly Come Dancing: It takes two, The Graham Norton Show, The Alan Titchmarsh Show, Big Brother’s (and Celebrity Big Brother’s) Bit on the Side, Britain’s Got Talent, and I’ve been interviewed on national radio programmes such as Saturday Live and Woman’s Hour (BBC Radio 4).
I’ve made two full length TV pilots in the UK and USA. I made Doctor Dance for Channel 4 (through Tiger Aspect) in 2012 and Doctor Happy for A&E network (through Brian Graden Media) in 2016.
On Stage
I’ve made three full length theatre shows: Dance Doctor, Dance (which premiered and ran for 23 nights at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe), Inspired: Psychology|Danced (which premiered in 2011) and Boogie on the Brain (which premiered before a UK Tour in 2018). In 2025 I made a new show with Dame Darcey Bussell for the Norwich Science Festival called “In Conversation and Dance”.
