Associate Professor Helen English is currently an Australia Research Council Early Career Research Fellow.

In her ARC funded fellowship she explored how older adults experience transformation through engagement with music and what within music-making enables such experiences. The research was conducted through case studies in Australia with a comparative study in London, UK in 2024.

She also leads a creative-ageing research team at the University of Newcastle, supported by the Hunter Medical Research Institute as part of the Healthy Minds Research Program. Her team is investigating the effects of engagement with creative courses designed for older adults, funded by Dementia Australia.

Helen founded a dementia choir with Associate Professor Michelle Kelly in 2023 in order to bring the benefits of singing in a choir to people living with dementia and their carers in the Hunter region. Her overarching passion is to widen participation in creative activities for all older adults. To further this, she created a digital map of music groups in Australia as a resource for older adults in anticipation of the introduction of social prescription in Australia. This has been shared on medical websites.

In 2024-2025, she collaborated with Maitland Regional Art Gallery on research into the benefits of their art and dementia program, Conversations, funded by a Primary Health Network grant.
In 2025-2026 she will lead a creative project focused on the wellbeing of primary school First Nations students.