Advisory Board:
Abduvali Abdurashidov (Tajikistan)
Jean During (France)
Denise Gill (US)
Anne Rasmussen (US)
Owen Wright (UK)
Rachel Harris
Rachel Harris (Principal Investigator) is Professor of Music at SOAS, University of London. Her research centres on China and Central Asia, and especially on Uyghur expressive culture. She has conducted fieldwork in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan over a period of twenty years. Her work focuses on intangible cultural heritage, music and Islam, soundscapes, state projects of territorialisation, and transnational flows of people and culture. She works in applied ways with performance and transmission projects, including concerts, workshops, and recording.
Rachel was principal investigator on the Leverhulme Research Project (2014-2017) Sounding Islam in China. The project involved collaborative field research with local communities and researchers in selected regions of China, and a series of publications including the edited volume Ethnographies of Islam in China. Her latest monograph Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam focuses on the Uyghur Islamic revival, using sound as a key medium through which to understand the experience of faith, patterns of religious change, political tensions and violence.
Earlier books include Singing the Village, which explores the musical life of the descendants of a Manchu garrison in the Uyghur region. Her second book, The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia, considers nationalist projects of canonisation, and the transformation of local traditions into national repertoires. She has published on the transnational circulation of popular musical styles including reggae, flamenco and Hindi film music, and processes of digital mediation and identity formation across the Uyghur diaspora.
She is involved with advocacy initiatives for Uyghur rights, and led the Uyghur Meshrep Project, supported by the British Academy Sustainable Development Fund (2018-2021), which worked to document and revitalise expressive culture and to promote sustainable development amongst Uyghur communities in Kazakhstan.
Staff profile: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/rachel-harris
Giovanni De Zorzi
Giovanni De Zorzi (PhD) is currently Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is mainly interested in classical and Sufi music of the Ottoman-Turkish and Central-Asian area. He alternates between his activity as a musician (ney flute in the Ottoman tradition as a soloist or with the Ensemble Marâghî), field research, scientific writing and the artistic direction of various musical programmes, which he has carried out so far mainly with the MiTO Settembre Musica Festival (Milan and Turin) and with the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies (IISMC) of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. Among his publications we may mention the monographs: Musiche di Turchia. Tradizioni e transiti tra oriente e occidente (2010); Maqām. Percorsi tra le musiche d’arte in area mediorientale e centroasiatica (2020); Introduzione alle musiche del mondo islamico (2021); Samā‘. L’ascolto e il concerto spirituale nella tradizione sufi (2021). He edited and translated Jean During, Musiche d’Iran. La tradizione in questione (2005) and Musica ed estasi. L’ascolto mistico nella tradizione sufi (2013). He edited Con i dervisci. Otto incontri sul campo (2013) and he co/edited, with Thomas Dähnhardt, Journey among Dervishes between Past and Present (2023).
Among his recordings: Ensemble Marâghî, Anwâr. From Samarqand to Constantinople on the Footsteps of Marâghî (2010); Ensemble Marâghî, Sounds from the Saray. The Young Bobowski at the Ottoman Court (2021).
Together with artistic director, neyzen Kudsi Erguner and with Giovanni Giuriati, director of the IISMC of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, he is part of the Bîrûn project. The project has so far produced six CD-books, published by Nota Edizioni, dedicated to various aspects of Ottoman art music, in which De Zorzi is present both as a musician and as the author of the scientific booklets: Composers at the Ottoman Court (2013); Armenian Composers of Ottoman Music(2014); The maftirîms and the Works of Sephardic Jews in Ottoman Classical Music (2016); Greek Composers of the Ottoman Maqâm (2017); Music of the Courts from Herat to Istanbul (2018) (2 CDs); The Nefes of the Bektâshî Sufi Brotherhood in Istanbul and the Balkans (2019).
Recently, the concert of the Bîrûn ensemble edition 2019, entitled Sacred Songs from Istanbul, was published on the Giorgio Cini Foundation YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/lFw3fJf-JcI.
A selection from the concert of the Bîrûn ensemble edition 2022, based on compositions by prince Demetrius Cantemir (1673-1723) is now in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktCedFJBfog and in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le1lgOCLDls
Polina Dessiatnitchenko
Polina Dessiatnitchenko is Assistant Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Her research focuses on mugham, a branch of traditional Azerbaijani music. She explores how musical creativity is a decolonizing practice suffused with affect.
Specifically, she examines how affect is conveyed in sung poetry, discussed fervently by classical musicians, and experienced intensely in performances, becoming a force that delineates emerging subjectivities in independent Azerbaijan. Her research interests include Azerbaijanitar, phenomenology, affect theory, ghazal poetry, aruz, Islamic aesthetics, Soviet and post-Soviet studies, postcolonial studies, popular music, and media studies. Polina is also a performer on the Azerbaijani tar, having studied as an apprentice in major tar lineages in Baku for a total of six years. Her applied work includes performance and recording projects with musicians in Azerbaijan.
Polina received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology and music, as well as direct-entry PhD degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto, where she was awarded the Garfield Weston Fellowship and Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Doctoral Graduate Scholarship for her research projects. Before joining Waseda University, Polina was working on her first monograph while holding a Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University’s Department of Music. Her articles have been published in Ethnomusicology Forum (2018), Ethnomusicology (2022), Asian Music (2022), Ethnomusicology Translations (2023) and Yale Journal of Music and Religion (2024). In addition to her current teaching at Waseda University, she designed and taught her own courses at the University of Toronto, Tufts University, and Doshisha University. Here is Polina Dessiatnitchenko’s personal website: https://polinadessi.com
Saeid Kordmafi
Saeid Kordmafi is a lecturer in Musicology of the Middle East at SOAS, University of London as well as a professional performer and composer of classical Iranian music. An ethno-musicologist, Saeid is interested in cross-cultural study of classical traditions in the maqâm world, with specific focus on the history of music theories and their relation to creative practice. His work also casts a net over music analysis and practice-based research. Having completed a BA in Classical Iranian Music and an MA in Art Studies both at University of Tehran, Saeid received his PhD from the Department of Music at SOAS University of London where he was supported by a Felix Full Scholarship.
Kordmafi has worked in the Music Departments at the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia and Tehran University of Art as a senior researcher and lecturer, respectively. He was also a member of the editorial board of Mahoor Music Quarterly in Iran as well as an expert advisor of the teaching resources at Open University inn the UK. Saeid is currently an Associate Editor of New Source Readings in the History of Music Theory which is being reviewed to be published by the University of Chicago Press.
Kordmafi was awarded the first BFE Fieldwork Grant (2015), AAWM Rob Schultz Junior Scholar Award (2019) and the British Institute for Persian Studies Research Grant (2019). In 2021, he was recognised by the British Academy as a Global Talent for his potential for academic leadership within a UK higher education institution alongside his research, teaching, and curriculum development roles.
Saeid Kordmafii has so far published some 30 journal and encyclopaedia articles, book chapters, interviews, and reports. At the present, he is working on his first monograph on rhythmic-metric system in the modern music practice of the Mediterranean Eastern Arab region. The book centres on the art-classical tradition which was developed from the mid 19th century (at the latest) in Egypt and Levant, partly rooted in the legacy of the preceding aesthetics, and currently revived by a small group of dedicated musicians in the Arab world.
As an active performer and composer, Saeid has participated in a good number of live performances, recordings, and workshops in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, Europe, and the United States, continuously engaged in carrying out collaborative music-making projects with acclaimed musicians from the Central Asia and the Arab world. He co-founded Rahâ Ensemble in 2007 and won the First Prize of the International Mugam Festival in Baku (2013) with this ensemble. He has released six CDs in Iran (as a composer or/and performer) and one collaborative compositional work (titled the Phoenix of Persia) in the UK. As part of his practice-based research in the Maqam Beyond Nation project, he has been working on the composition, arrangement, performance and recording of a classical Iranian music suite, including some of his own new compositions inspired by the neighbouring traditions, together with some of the pieces in the past and present repertoires of the maqâm realm.
Staff profile: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/saeid-kordmafi
Personal website: https://www.saeidkordmafi.com/
Mukaddas Mijit
Mukaddas Mijit is an ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, and artist. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) working on Uyghur artistic reaction in the diaspora after the Human rights crisis in the Uyghur region. She is also a member of a ERC project, Remote ethnography of XUAR.
She was born in Ürümchi, the capital of the Uyghur Region. Upon arriving in Paris in 2003 to study classical music, she realized how little the outside world knew of Uyghur culture. She then began her studies as an ethnomusicologist, researching the staging of Uyghur dance and music, receiving her PhD in 2015.
As a dancer, Mijit has performed internationally and collaborated with numerous performers, creating original works that infuse traditional Uyghur music and dance with other cultures and styles.
As a filmmaker, she has produced several ethnographic documentary films, including “Qetiq, Rock’n Ürümchi” (nominated in the 10th Aljazeera International Documentary Film Festival in 2014), 30 boys : Uyghur Meshrep project.
Most recently, she wrote and co-directed a medium-length film “Nikah” about the challenges that Uyghur women face from both traditional social mores and the highly oppressive political environment in China. She also made a series of video work about the trauma that Uyghurs are enduring in recent years : Hear Uyghur Voices
She is also a co-creator, co-director, and performer in Everybody Is Gone, an original interactive theatrical production designed to raise awareness about the ongoing crisis in the Uyghur Homeland.
She is the co-creator and co-host of “WEghur Stories,” a podcast entirely about the global Uyghur diaspora.
Lately she co-edited an anthology about Uyghur contemporary and oral literaturein French, published by Jentayu.
Aziz Isa Elkun
Aziz Isa Elkun is a poet, author and academic. He was born in Shayar County in Uyghuristan (East Turkistan), and graduated from Urumchi University. He has been living in London since 2001, where he studied at Birkbeck University. He has published many poems, stories, and research articles in both Uyghur and and English.
Since 2013, he has participated in various research projects on Uyghur culture and music as a researcher at SOAS University of London, including the ‘Sounding Islam China‘ project in 2013 and the ‘Uyghur Meshrep in Kazakhstan’ project in 2018.
He is an active member of the exiled Uyghur community and the founder of the Uyghur music group London Uyghur Ensemble, established in 2006. In early 2019, he produced a short documentary film, “An Unanswered Telephone Call”, depicting the ongoing sufferings of his family after China pursued a total blockade of international telephone calls between Uyghurs at home and abroad since 2017.
He has co-authored English language articles with Rachel Harris, in Inner Asia and Central Asian Survey (‘Invitation to a Mourning Ceremony’: Perspectives on the Uyghur Internet and ‘Islam by Smartphone: the changing sounds of Uyghur religiosity’) and ‘Islam by smartphone: reading the Uyghur Islamic revival on WeChat’, Central Asian Survey 38(1), 2019, 61-80; co-authored a research report with Rachel Harris published by Uyghur Human Rights Project February 2023 (The Complicity of Heritage: Cultural Heritage and Genocide in the Uyghur Region); a book chapter published by The Routledge in 2022, “The Routledge Companion to Music and Human Rights” (‘Music, Terror, and Civilizing Projects in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’).
One of his major editing and poetry translation works is the “Uyghur Poems” anthology, which was published by the UK Everyman’s Library, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on 7 November 2023. He is a member of the English PEN. First Anthology of Uyghur Poetry in English. 1: Poets Sing of a Fight for Freedom; First Anthology of Uyghur Poetry in English. 2: The Time of Tragedy; Roses (published by Los Angeles Review of Books January 2022)
In September 2024, Elkun’s debut poetry collection “Çimenkuş” (A Flower Bird) translated from Uyghur to Turkish by Amina Wayit Sedef, was published by Önce Kitap Publishers in Türkiye. https://www.astanayayinlari.com/cimenkus-aziz-isa-elkun-siir-kitabi-2024
Since April 2025, he has also been serving as President of the Uyghur PEN Centre. He is a member of English PEN. You can read poetry, academic and other literary works from his personal blog: www.azizisa.org/en
Rosa Vercoe
Rosa is a proactive and results-driven professional with over 30 years’ international work experience in Higher Education and NGO sectors. Throughout her career, she organised events (conferences, seminars, PhD workshops, training programmes) at various academic and non-governmental institutions, including SOAS, UCL, KCL, London Centre for Social Studies, Consumers International, etc. Her current jobs duties are split between UCL, Faculty of Brain Sciences, where she coordinates administration of PhD students and junior doctors in training, and SOAS School of Arts, where she coordinates the UKRI-funded MAQAM Project.
In addition to her work duties, Rosa is following her long-term passion in promoting Central Asia in the UK. Her articles were published in English, Russian and Uzbek languages by BBC Uzbek, Voices on Central Asia (George Washington University), Jahon News (Uzbekistan), CAAN (Central Asia Analytical Network), OCA Magazine in London and Abai Centre in Washington and Visit Uzbekistan magazine. Rosa has a particular interest in researching Central Asian dance. She shared the results of her research though published articles and presentations at the international conferences in Uzbekistan (Khiva) and Portugal (ICTM). She is a long-term member of London Central Asia Research Network.
From 2018 to 2025, Rosa was a key player in the British-Uzbek Society (BUS) in London, organising various events, discussion panels, and webinars. From 2022 to December 2024, she served as chairperson of the British Uzbek Society. In September 2021, to mark the 30th anniversary of Uzbekistan’s Independence, Rosa was awarded a medal for her service to Uzbekistan at the House of Lords in London.
Rosa holds Degree with Honours in Russian Language and Literature from Kazakhstan State University, MA in International Relations from Nottingham Trent University and MSc in Development Studies with Special Reference to Central Asia from SOAS University of London. She was born in Turkmenistan (Mary) but grew up and built up her earlier professional career as a university tutor in Kazakhstan (Almaty).
Eugene Leung
Eugene Leung is a PhD student at SOAS, supported by the ERC/UKRI project “Maqām Beyond Nation” scholarship. He is working on a thesis focusing on aspects of modal creativity in the Tajik-Uzbek maqom traditions. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Cambridge followed by a Masters degree in Ethnomusicology from Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been a Research Associate at the School of Professional Education and Executive Development of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, as well as a part-time lecturer at the Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Eugene performs on the Uzbek dutar and Arabic oud, and has been involved with many outreach projects and concerts as a curator and as a performer for maqam-based music and world music in Hong Kong.
Will Sumits
Will Sumits is an ethnomusicologist and musician exploring the musical histories of the greater Middle East and Central Asia. With interests in musical paleography and the entangled conceptual histories of music from South Asia to North Africa, his research has focused on ever-evolving living musical traditions and their trans-historical journeys across geographies and cultures.
He is currently based in Istanbul at the Orient-Institut as a research associate for the Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae (CMO) project, where he is tasked with expanding the CMO Source Catalog of music manuscripts and notations. He joins the Maqām Beyond Nation team to assist in research and research data management.