Our teachers:
expertly qualified, active throughout the world

Highest standard of teacher training.

It takes about five to eight years to complete the training required to be an IMTA teacher. It includes a minimum of 24 weeks attending IMTA courses as well as methodology and didactics training. Once the applicant has attained an IFOMT-recognised OMT qualification and successfully completed the teacher training course, he/she is eligible to go forward to the final exams. The final exams include written work, patient treatment, a presentation and comprehensive technical examinations.

All assistants and all IMTA teachers undertake to carry out a significant amount of hours of clinical work each year using the Maitland® Concept. This is in addition to their normal teaching activities. Our quality management system also guarantees that our teachers undergo constant further training, thus ensuring that our tuition remains of the highest quality in our courses.

Our Teachers

Marc van Liebergen

Véronique Bornet

Véronique grew up in Valais, a bilingual canton in the Swiss Alps. Of Swiss and French origin, she has a heartfelt connexion with these countries, as well as with Australia were she lived for a year. After 4 years of training in physiotherapy in Lausanne, she graduated in 2003 from the HESAV.

With a particular interest in the NMSK domain, she followed a training in the Maitland® Concept in Lutry, finishing her level 3 in 2012. Enthusiastic about the value of this new knowledge which has strongly influenced her clinical practice, she has committed herself to the training of IMTA Teacher Candidate in order to improve her skills and knowledge, and to be able to share the richness of the Maitland® concept with other colleagues. To this end, she also keeps leading a dynamic and stimulating regional working group, connecting physiotherapists practicing the Maitland concept in Valais.

She had the chance to work at the Physiotherapy and Training Center of Pierre Jeangros in Lutry and to develop her own private practice in Sion. Today she teaches IMTA courses in Lutry and works at Horion Physiotherapy in Sion in a team of five colleagues, all trained in the Maitland concept and experts in various fields.

Her career as an IMTA Teacher Candidate has been highlighted by various training courses, including the OMT program followed in Germany between 2013 and 2015. She is today certified OMTsvomp®.

Véronique aims to make this valuable training known and available in the French-speaking world. Therefore she got involved in the creation of the AFOM OMT curriculum and teaches the "Relational skills and psycho-social factors" module in Paris. She is also an active member of the MaiFra, an alumni association of French speaking Maitland® graduates.

In addition to specific physiotherapy training, she enjoyed taking adult education courses allowing her to develop her teaching skills. Thanks to her life and international working paths, she can teach the Maitland® Concept in French, German and English. Certified IMTA Teacher in 2021, she teaches Maitland courses in Switzerland and Hungary. In addition, she collaborates with the swiss PT schools (HES-SO), teaching NMSK topics in BSc and advanced levels and offering OMPT clinical supervisions.

Rolf Walter

Alberto Piacenza

Renée De Ruijter

René Bakodi

Werner Nafzger

Stefan Schiller

Renate Wiesner

Thomas Horre

Daria Horre

Pieter Westerhuis

Ladislao Campos Sánchez

Maria Brugner-Seewald

Hugo Stam

Davide Bettio

Jürg Hauswirth

Steffen Klittmann

Matthew Newton

Matthew graduated as a Physiotherapist from Sheffield in the UK in 1988. He then stayed in the area for a few years and worked in a hospital setting before moving to Canada in 1992, where he worked in a private practice. After a few years he returned to the UK and worked in various hospitals. He achieved a Post Graduate Certificate in Manual Therapy from Sheffield Hallam University in 1996 and then went onto the International Maitland Teachers’ Association (IMTA) course programme, which he completed in 2001.
He gained his IFOMPT OMT qualification in 2005 and became a member of the Musculoskeletal Association of Chartered Physiotherapists (MACP). As well as working independently as a private practitioner, Matthew has worked in the NHS as a lead clinician in the neuromusculoskeletal physiotherapy department and in an extended scope role as a specialist Orthopaedic Physiotherapy Practitioner. In this role he has gained experience in requesting medical investigations such as blood tests, x-rays, MRI scans etc. He is also qualified in the administration of steroid injections for peripheral musculoskeletal disorders.
Matthew qualified as an IMTA teacher in 2013 and has since taught courses in the UK, France, Italy, Jordan, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Switzerland. He also teaches his own two-day course on Medical Screening in various countries around Europe. He was the Consulting Editor for the current editions of Maitland’s Vertebral Manipulation (8th Ed.) and Maitland’s Peripheral Manipulation (5th Ed.). In addition, he co-authored the chapter on the management of shoulder and shoulder girdle disorders in the latter text.
Matthew continues to work as a specialist clinician in the neuromusculoskeletal field of Physiotherapy. As the current Vice-President of IMTA he is a keen advocate of developing and modernizing IMTA’s curriculum, to ensure the teachings are evidence influenced and up to date with contemporary thinking.

Robert Valentiny

Pierre Fisette

Lisa Mantovani

Isabelle Werner

Pierre Jeangros

Sandra Baumgärtner

Paolo Mastromarchi

Harry von Piekartz

Michaela Neubauer

Gerti Bucher-Dollenz

Birgit Ferber-Busse

Honorary Members

Honorary Members are long-standing IMTA members and teachers who have distinguished themselves through their exceptional commitment to the IMTA and manual therapy. Their contributions have had a significant impact on the development of the IMTA and the professional community. While they no longer teach regularly, they continue to make their expertise available to the IMTA and its students.

Trisha Davies-Knorr

Elly Hengeveld

Elly completed her Bachelor in Physiotherapy at the Akademie voor Fysiotherapie in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1980. After working in private practice in the Netherlands for a short time, she moved to Switzerland in the same year, where she has since practiced in various hospitals and private practice. She attained her OMPT qualification with the Schweizer Verband für Orthopädische Manuelle Therapie (SVOMP) in 1990 and the teaching qualification "Ausbildnerin Berner Kaderschule" in 1992. In 2000 she graduated from the University of East London, the UK, with a Masters of Science. 2012 she was awarded the title "Clinical Specialist MSK/PhysioSwiss" by the Swiss Physiotherapy Association and has served as a Clinical Supervisor and Coach for those physiotherapists who wish to obtain the same professional qualification.
Elly has published numerous articles and book contributions. She is co-author of the 6th edition of Maitland's Vertebral Manipulation. She published together with Kevin Banks the edition of Maitland's Peripheral Manipulation (2005), Maitland's Clinical Companion (2009). Furthermore, she edited/authored editions of Maitland's Vertebral Manipulation – Management of Musculoskeletal Disorders Vol. 1. 8th ed. (2014) and Maitland's Peripheral Manipulation – Management of Musculoskeletal Disorders Vol. 2. 5th ed. (2014). She is currently working with Gerti Bucher-Dollenz on the books' newest editions, published by the end of 2023.

After qualifying as a teacher with the International Maitland Teachers Association (IMTA) in 1992 she became Senior Teacher in 2003. She was secretary of the IMTA from 1992 until 1994, and Chairperson from 1995 until 2001. Elly is a previous executive committee member of the SVMP (Schweizerischer Verband Manipulativer Physiotherapie) and past member of the educational committee of the Schweizerischer Verband Orthopaedischer Manipulativer Physiotherapie (SVOMP). Currently, she is the coordinator of the educational program in the Netherlands, which leads to OMPT-Qualification based on the IMTA-course program Levels 1-3.
She has moved to Wimberley, Texas, U.S.A. in 2018. She continues to teach in pre- and postgraduate courses in Europe and the U.S.A. and is preparing for her license to practice in Texas.
Her special interests include the treatment of patients with chronic pain; movement-paradigms as the specific basis for the body-of-knowledge of physiotherapists; paradigms of illness experience and salutogenic perspectives; clinical reasoning processes and the role of narrative reasoning in clinical practice; the psychosocial dimensions of physiotherapy and manual therapy; qualitative research methods within physiotherapy research.

Jan Herman van Minnen

Our Subject Teacher

Subject Teachers are members of IMTA who do not teach full courses but specialize in certain important subjects.
They conduct specialist classes or teach individual segments within our regular courses.