Niyati Dhokai

Dr. Niyati Dhokai is a Research Associate Professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at George Mason University, and she also serves as the Program Director for the Veterans and the Arts Initiative at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. In addition, Dhokai also supports the College of Visual and Performing Arts as a Faculty Fellow for Curricular Innovation.

Having directed the Veterans and the Arts Initiative since its inception as a community-based arts program in support of military-connected people in 2015, Dhokai has grown the Initiative from an annual Veterans Day event to a year-round program that has served over 16,000 people through uniquely designed virtual and in-person workshops, a collaboration with Prince William Public Libraries, and curated concerts and special events.

Dhokai has published research outcomes on the impact of community arts programming for military-connected people as the single or lead author in multiple peer-reviewed, international publications including the Journal of Applied Arts & Health, the Journal of Aging Studies, and MUSICultures. She and her team have also published a manual on virtual arts engagement that was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Overall, Dhokai and her teams have received five contracts to complete work in support of Creative Forces®: NEA Military Healing Arts Network, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Dhokai currently serves on a national-level technical working group in support of Creative Forces® through an invited contract from 2024 – 2027. This is the fourth national-level working group that Dhokai has been invited to advise on since 2019.

Dhokai has made over 20 presentations of findings from community-based events, including Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda MD, the Soldier and Family Assistance Center at Fort Belvoir, peer-reviewed international academic conferences in ethnomusicology and the health sciences, and at George Mason University events.

In recognition of her work, Dhokai is the 2018 recipient of the Change Maker of the Year award from the Virginia Department of Veterans Services and the 2018 recipient of George Mason University’s Jack Wood Award for Town Gown Relations in the faculty/staff category. Prior to joining the faculty at GMU, she worked with veterans and service members recovering from injuries in post-acute neurorehabilitation in the Washington D.C. metro area by designing and facilitating music activities to support community integration. She has a B.A. in Music from George Mason University, and she completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in Music (Ethnomusicology) from the University of Alberta (Canada), where her doctoral dissertation research was supported by a Fulbright grant to study in India.