School of Humanities and Sciences


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  • Ashkan Nazari

    Ashkan Nazari

    Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2023
    Iranian Studies - Iran Media Projects, Iranian Studies

    BioAshkan Nazari

    M.A. Ethnomusicology, Tehran University of Art, Tehran
    B.A., Music, University of Tehran, Tehran

    A Kurdish-Iranian musician and researcher, Ashkan is currently an ethnomusicology PhD student at Stanford. He holds a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Tehran and a master's in ethnomusicology from Tehran University of Art.
    Ashkan's more than 15-year-long research career has centred upon Kurdish classical and folk musics as well as Iranian classical music. The core area he is pursuing at Stanford covers the intersections between music, on the one hand, and genocide, war, violence, intellectual movements, Islam and Kurdish identity, on the other. His interest also includes the development of ethnographic studies of the relationship existing between maqām as a cultural-musical concept, with ethnicity, racism and colonialism.

    In his quest to explore those realms, Ashkan has already been prolific back home, with three titles: The Concept and Structure of Maqām in Kurdish Music, The Structure of Musical Modes in Hawrāmi Music, the Anthropological Aspects of Maqām Music of Iraqi Kurdistan, with the latter set to be released soon. Many of his numerous articles have additionally appeared across prestigious Iranian journals, others presented at international ethnomusicology conferences.

    As the founder and conductor of the first-ever philharmonic orchestra in his Kurdish hometown of Paveh, Ashkan also taught Iranian music theory and Iranian ensembles, while instructing setār performance and analysis of Iranian classical music at the University of Kurdistan and the University of Art and Culture in Kermanshah and Sanandaj, respectively.