Overview

I am an interdisciplinary scholar with a particular interest in the politics of belonging. My research lies at the intersection of social theory (especially critical, feminist, postcolonial, and the post-Anthropocene) with music and sound studies. I am 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. 

My 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. My 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 my 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.