Dr. Audrey M. Wozniak is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work focuses on the politics of belonging. Her research lies at the intersection of social theory (especially critical, feminist, postcolonial, and the post-Anthropocene) with music and sound studies. She is interested in how sound and space are imbricated in individual and collective negotiations of boundaries—of the self, identities, histories, nations, modernity, etc.—and emerge in the organization of people, work, and lived environments.
Her research has examined these issues in contexts as varied as the cultural diplomacy efforts of Turkish diasporic community music groups as well as the path of the world-famous Zildjian cymbal from seventeenth-century Ottoman military ensembles into European orchestras and American jazz bands. Her ongoing projects include a monograph examining the outsized role of the state in producing the dominant “amateur-professional” dichotomy underpinning the institutions and hierarchies of today’s Turkish music industry. Much of Wozniak’s work is defined by engagement with performance ethnography, artistic research, and public outreach as a musician-scholar working in the creative industries of Türkiye, Europe, and the United States.
She received her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology with a secondary concentration in Social Anthropology from Harvard University and is a current Standing Affiliate at the Orient-Institut Istanbul. She was formerly a Fellow at the American Research Institute in Turkey as well as a Doctoral Scholar at the Orient-Institut Istanbul. She was the Joint Fellow in Heritage Studies at Koç University's Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations and the British Institute at Ankara and has received additional support for her research from the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Grant and Cynthia Verba Merit Scholarship. She has published academic and journalistic writing in Music & Politics, Urban People, Applied Linguistics Review, Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs, China Dialogue, TimeOut Hong Kong, and ABC News.
Audrey holds a Master's degree in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics, a Master's degree in Music Performance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and a Bachelor's degree in Music and East Asian Studies from Wellesley College. She was appointed Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University's I Tatti Center for Renaissance Studies in Italy. Her previous professional experiences include working for ABC News Beijing Bureau and the U.S. Department of State Consulate General in Guangzhou, China.
She is an accomplished performer and experienced facilitator of cross-cultural artistic programming. Trained as a Western classical violinist, she has spent nearly a decade learning Turkish classical makam-based music through working with master musicians. She has served as an academic expert and musical guest on five Turkish National Radio and Television (TRT) programs and curates a popular social media channel featuring educational and artistic content related to her cross-cultural research and musical work. She is the creator and host of "Türkiye'yi Dinliyorum [I'm Listening to Türkiye]," a musical travel documentary series on Turkish National Television in which she interviews and performs alongside eminent culture-bearers of the nation's diverse musical traditions.
