Country of residence

United Kingdom

Brief introduction

PhD candidate, Kurdish Studies, University of Exeter

Education

MA in Kurdish Studies, Centre for Kurdish Studies, University of Exeter

Academic profile

Until I have started my PhD in October this year, my research interest has been Kurdish dengbêjs (bards). I have been looking into how the popular discourse about these performers had emerged after the 1990s and how elements of it have been constantly re-negotiated between different actors who play active roles in the cultural, political, or other spheres of power. With my PhD research, my interests have shifted towards the Dom musicians in the Tor area (also known as Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey) whose clients in the past included Assyrian, Yezidi, and Sunni Kurdish communities. My present research concerns the native concepts and understandings of Dom performers and performances. By native I am here referring to both the performers' and their clients' communities as both are natives of the area in question. My research is still taking shape although my current approach is informed by cognitive anthropology and the anthropological literature on peripatetics.

Publications

• Review of Lokman Turgut's Mündliche Literature der Kurden in den Regionen Botan und Hekarî (2010, Logos Verlag) in Fabula, vol.53(3/4), pp.343-346, 2012.
• Review of Khanna Omerkhali's Kurdish Reader: Modern Literature and Oral Texts in Kurmanji (2011, Harrasowitz) in Iranian Studies, vol.46(1), pp.145-148, 2013.
• Review of Özgür Akgül's Romanistanbul: Şehir Müzik ve Bir Dönüşüm Öyküsü (2009, Punto) for the Romani Studies journal. In progress.

Keywords

Ethnomusicology, oral literature, Dom, Kurdish, peripatetics

Contact

nac205@exeter.ac.uk browse members list