Principal Investigator
Panagiotis C. Poulos is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Department of Music Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He studied ethnomusicology with a focus on the musical traditions of the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), where he also completed his doctoral dissertation on Ottoman classical music, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. His research centers on the musical traditions of the Islamic world, the cultural history of late Ottoman and Turkish music and arts, and the history of everyday life in Ottoman cities. Panagiotis C. Poulos is one of the founding members of the research team sonorCities, which has been funded by the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation for the project Learning Culture through City Soundscapes. He is co-editor of Ottoman Intimacies, Balkan Musical Realities (2013, Finnish Institute at Athens) and author of Music in the Islamic World: Sources, Perspectives, Practices (e-book, 2015, Hellenic Academic Libraries Link). In 2013 he was awarded an honorable mention Ömer Lütfi Barkan Award by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association for his article Rethinking Orality in Turkish Classical Music: A Genealogy of Contemporary Musical Assemblages (MEJC 4, 2011).
Researchers
Eleni Kallimopoulou is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Macedonia. She studied Ethnomusicology with an emphasis on the musical cultures of the Near and Middle East (MMus, PhD, SOAS, University of London). She is author of Paradosiaká: Music, Meaning and Identity in Modern Greece (Ashgate, 2009), co-author of Learning Culture through City Soundscapes – A Teacher Handbook (with P.C. Poulos and K. Kornetis, University of Macedonia, 2013) and co-editor of the book Introduction in Ethnomusicology (Asini, 2014). Her research interests centre on musical performance and ethnography; public folklore and the politics of culture; nationalism, religion and ritual; auditory culture and urban space; and epistemology and methodology of research. As a founding member of the research team “sonorCities”, Kallimopoulou convened the research project Learning Culture through City Soundscapes funded by the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation (2012). She is presently a member of the board of directors of the Greek Oral History Association and the Folklore and Ethnological Museum of Macedonia and Thrace, and a member of the International Advisory Board of Ethnomusicology Forum.
Markos Katsianis is Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Patras. He has studied History and Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and received an MSc in “Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology” at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He holds a PhD in Archaeology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, funded by the program Human Resources in Research and Technology 2003. His research centers on the application of digital technology in Archaeology with a special focus on GIS, 3D modelling, data preservation and re-use. He is vice-chair of the Greek chapter of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA-GR) and a member of the editorial team of the Journal of Critical Studies in Cultural Heritage. His book on Excavation Methodology and Information System Design for Archaeological Data Management (Kyriakides, 2012) has received the Lysimachos Kaftantzoglou award from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Nikolaos (Nikos) Mavrelos is Professor of Modern Greek Philology at the Department of Greek Philology (Democritus University of Thrace) since 2005. He studied Modern Greek Philology (University of Crete) and completed his doctoral dissertation on Nikolaos Episkopopoulos’ Literary Criticism (University of Cyprus). He taught at the “Universita degi Studi di Bari”, Italy (2003-2004). His research focuses on literature and criticism (late 17th-early 20th cent.), under the light of theory of genres, early modernity and theory of ideas, as well as literary movements and comparative studies. He is member of Greek Comparative Literature Society and European Society of Modern Greek Studies and head of the Modern Greek and Comparative Philology Laboratory at his Department. He is the author of numerable articles in scientific reviews, monographs, anthologies and conference acts. His latest study is: Roidis’ tangible images and Baudelaire’s paintings of modern life. Aspects of Modernity in Emmanouíl Roidis’ works, Lambert Academic Publishing 2018.
Sofia Prokou is teacher of Turkish as a foreign language at the Department of Modern Turkish and Modern Asian Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has been a adjunct lecturer of Turkish as a foreign language at Aegean University, Department of Mediterranean Studies, Rhodes. She studied Social Sciences at Boğaziçi University in Turkey. She has a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the School of Philosophy of Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. She completed a Master’s degree at the same university, at the Institute of Developing Countries. Sofia Prokou is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Linguistics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Areas of Research: Applied Linguistics, teaching Turkish as a foreign language, teaching the word order for developing the four language acquisition skills, Grammatical description of Turkish, Comparative linguistics. She works as a Conference Interpreter (languages: Greek, Turkish, French, English) and is a member of AIIC (Association Internationale d’Interprètes de Conférence, Geneva).
Post-doctoral researchers
Konstantina Andrianopoulou is teaching history at Moraitis School of Athens (junior high school and high school). After graduating from University of Athens, Department of History and Archaeology, she continued her studies at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul (MA in History) and at Panteion University of Athens (PhD, Department of Political Sciences and History), funded by Onassis Foundation’s scholarship program. Her academic interests focus on the late Ottoman and early Turkish republican era, concerning issues of nation-state politics towards minorities, the making of community and minority notions and space, as well as intercommunal/inter-religious relations. She has participated in the following research programs: “Migration of Greek-Orthodoxs from Ottoman Empire to the United States of America, late 19th century-First World War” [Pithagoras II-Support to research groups of Panteion University] and “Gender and Inter-religious relations in South Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean (19th-20th centuries)» [École Française d’Athènes- Faculty of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, University of Athens].
Anna Vakali graduated from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2003) and received her MA in Turkish Studies from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul (2007). In 2017 she received her PhD Degree from the Near and Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Basel. Her PhD Thesis deals with the interrogations and trials of bandits and (proto)nationalists at the Ottoman courts of the Balkans during the Tanzimat reform era. Between 2017 and 2019 she worked as a Postdoc researcher of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in the framework of a project related to the diplomatic and social history of the borders between Ottomans, Austrian Empire and Serbia during the 19th century. For detailed CV and publications please visit the website https://oeaw.academia.edu/AnnaVakali.
Doctoral candidates
Gerasimos Sofoklis Papadopoulos is a PhD candidate of Byzantine Musicology at the University of Athens, under the supervision of Achilleas Chaldaeakes. He studied Greek Philology and holds a Master’s degree in Linguistics. In his thesis, he studies and theorizes the practices of the current psaltic art, using linguistic notions and methodologies. His musicological interests are also focused on the comparison of Ottoman makam system and neo-byzantine modes, the history of the byzantine chant and its resulting musical idioms, as well as the interpretative evolution of the Middle Byzantine notation. He translated from English to Greek Christian Troelsgård’s book Byzantine Neumes and edited an English-Greek glossary of byzantino-musicological terms, which is based on his translation. He is a professional chanter and stable member of the choir “Maistors of the Psaltic Art”. He also plays, sings and composes Easter music, while from 2018 he teaches makam theory in the Center of Greek Music “Foivos Anogiannakes”
IT – Researcher
George Panagiotopoulos graduate from the Department of Natural Resources Management & Agricultural Engineering of the Agricultural University of Athens, he holds an MSc in Environment and Development of Mountainous Areas by the National Technical University of Athens and he is currently PhD candidate at the same university. His research interests focus on the quantification of accessibility/remoteness and WebGIS applications. He has participated in several research projects held by the National Technical University of Athens and the Agricultural University of Athens. He is also a software developer, specialized in WebGIS applications, running a self-owned company.
Academic advisors
Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music. During the 1970s he spearheaded the revival of klezmer music. Today he is a per-former on the traditional klezmer dulcimer, the cimbal, and on the Ottoman lute, the tanbur. Under an NEH grant (1984-86) he translated the seminal Ottoman-language Book of the Science of Music (ca. 1700) by the Moldavian Prince Demetrius Cantemir. His book, Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition, and the Early Ottoman Instru-mental Repertoire (Berlin, 1996) is taught as a basic text worldwide. In 2004 he co-directed the successful application of the Mevlevi Dervishes of Turkey as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity for UNESCO. He is currently writing a book on the music of the Mevleviye–From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes–for the Agha Khan University. Feldman has also published extensively on Ottoman poetry, especially on the “Indian Style” of the seventeenth century, for which he had received an NEH grant in 1999. His current research interests include the relation of rhythmic cycle (usul) and melody in Ottoman music. Since 2014 he has been a board member of the Corpus Musciae Otto-manicae (CMO) Project of the Wilhelm Westphalian University in Münster. In 2018 he had conducted the workshop “A Locally Generated Modernity: the Ottoman Empire in the ‘Long’ Eighteenth Century” at NYU in Abu Dhabi. His book Klezmer: Music, History and Memory, was published by Oxford University Press (2016). Between 2011 and 2015 he conducted field work in Moldova, Romania, Germany, Turkey, Israel and Canada on the interaction on klezmer and Moldavian Gypsy (lautar) music during the 18th to the mid-20th centuries, under the auspices of NYU Abu Dhabi. Feldman is currently a Senior Research Fellow affiliated with New York University, Abu Dhabi. In addition to the CMO in Münster he is on the Advisory Board of the Istanbul Research Institute. He is the Creative Director of the Klezmer Institute in New York.
Research Fellows
Nikos Andrikos is Assistant Professor in the Department of Music Studies of the University of Ioannina. From 2000 to 2004 he participated in the scientific programme of Manolis Hatzigiakoumis “Monuments of Ecclesiastical Music”. He lived in Istanbul from 2004 to 2007, working as a chanter in the first choir of the Ecumenical Patriarchate next to Archon Protopsaltis Leonidas Asteris. He has released two albums (Motivasion 2014, Sedef 2017 – Kalan Müzik) including his own compositions, which belong to the tradition of Ottoman music in terms of form, style and melodic-modal behaviour. His scientific interests are related with the compositional production in the field of Ecclesiastical and secular-urban music of the late-Ottoman period, as well as the idiomatic-oral dimension of the aforementioned genres. As a musician (lavta, saz, tanbur, singing) he has given numerous of concerts in Greece and abroad. He has published two books, as well as papers in scientific journals and has made presentations in musicological conferences.
Evangelia Chaldaeaki is a PhD candidate at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.). She acquired her bachelor degree from the same Department and has a master’s degree (MA) in Folklore Studies from the Department of Philology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her master thesis Ο Κ. Α. Ψάχος και η συμβολή του στην καταγραφή και μελέτη ελληνικών δημοτικών τραγουδιών was published from Edition Orpheus in 2018, and also granted with the Kaftantzoglio Award 2018. She has participated in research and educational programs, made presentations in conferences and has published various papers in scientific journals. She is also concerned about traditional Greek music, while she teaches Greek singing at the Center of Greek Music “Foivos Anogiannakes”.