Margo Fuchs Knill

Prof. Margo Fuchs Knill, Ph.D., is a pioneer in the field of intermodal expressive arts. Trained as an elementary school teacher in Switzerland, she studied Education and Special Education with a minor in Anthropological Psychology at the University of Zurich and completed training in gestalt therapy at the Fritz Perls Institute in Germany. She later pursued advanced graduate studies in Intermodal Expressive Arts Psychotherapy at Lesley College, Cambridge, MA, under Shaun McNiff, and earned her doctorate in Psychology and the Arts at Union Graduate School, Ohio. From 1983 to 1995, she taught in the pioneering Expressive Therapies Graduate Program at Lesley University. 

At the European Graduate School (EGS), Prof. Fuchs Knill served as a founding dean and core faculty member. She guided the development of the Masters programs in Expressive Arts Therapy, Coaching & Consulting, and Conflict Transformation & Peacebuilding (1996–2017), and was Dean of the Division of Arts, Health and Society from 2017 to 2023. She continues to teach, advise and supervise doctoral students, while contributing internationally through guest professorships in Europe, North America, Asia, and South America. 

Her academic and clinical work centers on intermodal expressive arts therapy, art-based research, supervision, coaching, and curriculum development. 

Alongside her teaching and leadership, she has maintained an expressive arts psychotherapy practice since 1980. He approach is poetic, resource-oriented, and phenomenological, building on Knill’s concept of Intermodal Decentering (IDEC®).

An active writer and poet, Prof. Fuchs Knill publishes widely and frequently gives talks and poetry readings. Her recent works include Poetry in Expressive Arts: Supporting Resilience through Poetic Writing (with S. Atkins, 2021, translated into Chinese) and the bilingual poetry collection Leben will leben. Love Survives (2022).