Prof. ERDEM ÖZDEMİR

Biography

Born in 1980 in Sakarya, Dr Özdemir graduated from the National Conservatoire of Turkish Music of Istanbul Technical University in 2003. He received his master’s degree with the thesis ‘Abdal Music’ in 2008 and his PhD with the thesis ‘Aşık Music’ in 2013. His first solo album was released in 2010. After working as a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden in 2011, Dr Özdemir finished his post-doctoral research on Uyghur music under the supervision of Dr Rachel Harris at SOAS University London. During his artistic and academic career, he has given many academic presentations and performed at numerous concerts - in Turkey as well as many countries in the world – as a bağlama instrumentalist and a vocalist. At present, he is teaching bağlama and ‘History of Traditional Turkish Music’ to undergraduates, and ‘Traditional Music in Central Asian Turkic Communities’, ‘Music in the Socio-Cultural Structures of Turkey’, and ‘Music in Ottoman Geography’ to post-graduates in the National Conservatoire of Uludağ University. Apart from the bağlama, he also plays and teaches the lavta and dutar.