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King’s People

Biography

Martin Stokes is the King Edward Professor of Music. He studied first music, then social anthropology at Oxford. He taught at The Queen's University of Belfast (1989-1997), The University of Chicago (1997-2007) and Oxford University (2007-2012). He was a Howard Foundation Fellow at the Chicago Humanities Institute in 2002-3.

He has been a visiting professor at Bogazici University in Istanbul on two occasions, and currently holds an honorary professorship in the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen. In 2013 he gave the Bloch Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley.

Research Interests

  • Ethnomusicology and anthropology of music
  • Middle East and Europe Popular music and culture
  • Social and Cultural Theory

Martin is currently working on theorizations of emotion and cultural intimacy for his forthcoming Bloch Lectures. To date his work has focused on questions of ethnicity, identity, globalization and the history of ethnomusicology and folk music study. His work has focused on modern Turkey and Egypt, with broader interests across the Mediterranean and Europe. His article on "Music and the Global Order" won the Jaap Kunst Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2004; his most recent book, The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (Chicago University Press 2010) won the Society of Ethnomusicology's Merriam Prize in 2010. He was awarded the Dent Medal by the Royal Musical Association in 2010, and was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2012.

Publications

Theory and Practice in the Music of the Islamic World, co-edited Rachel Harris and Martin Stokes, London: Routledge 2018

Islam and Popular Culture, co-edited Karin Van Nieuwkerk, Mark LeVine and Martin Stokes, Austin: University of Texas Press 2016

For more details, please see his full research profile.

Teaching

Martin will be teaching a range of courses in ethnomusicology and the anthropology of music, covering broad historical, methodological and ethnographic issues, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, many, but not all, with a focus on the music of the Middle East and the Islamic world.

PhD Supervision

Martin welcomes applications for PhD topics related to any of his research interests. 

  • Susannah Knights (Tunisia, post Arab spring soundscapes)
  • Sevan Habib (Lebanon, armenian culture)
  • Francesca Nardella (Ottoman lyrics)
  • Giuliano Danieli (ethnic music in Pasolini films)
  • Louis Brehony (Palestine)
View all publications