Stanford University
Showing 3,681-3,700 of 6,033 Results
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Ashkan Nazari
Ph.D. Student in Music, admitted Autumn 2023
Iranian Studies Student Assistant, Iranian StudiesBioAshkan Nazari
Degrees / Education
M.A., Ethnomusicology, Tehran University of Art, Tehran, 2016
B.A., Music, University of Tehran, Tehran, 2012
A Kurdish-Iranian musician, multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, and researcher, Ashkan is currently a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology and a doctoral certificate student in composition at Stanford University. Ashkan’s compositional work draws on the Iranian dastgāh system and Kurdish maqām idioms, while his practice at Stanford engages contemporary and experimental compositional approaches.
Ashkan’s more than 15-year research career has centered on Kurdish classical and folk musics as well as Iranian classical music. At Stanford, his work explores intersections between music and genocide, war, violence, intellectual movements, Islam, and Kurdish identity. He is also interested in developing decolonial ethnographic approaches to maqām as a cultural–musical practice and concept, particularly in relation to ethnicity and racism.
In his quest to explore those realms, Ashkan has already been prolific back home, with two titles: The Concept and Structure of Maqām in Kurdish Music, The Structure of Musical Modes in Hawrāmi Music. His articles have appeared in leading Iranian journals, and he has presented his research at international ethnomusicology conferences.
As the founder and conductor of the first philharmonic orchestra in his Kurdish hometown of Paveh, Ashkan has also taught Iranian music theory and directed Iranian ensembles, and has instructed setār performance and the analysis of Iranian classical music at the University of Kurdistan and the University of Art and Culture in Kermanshah and Sanandaj, respectively. -
Luke Neal
Masters Student in Chemical Engineering, admitted Autumn 2025
BioI'm currently a process engineer at Merck working at the Formulation and Laboratory Experimentation Facility with a focus on oral solid dosage production. I recently graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemical Engineering and an Energy Studies certificate. At Yale, I was on the Varsity Men's Tennis team. My internship experiences during undergraduate studies included working as a Process Engineering Intern in ExxonMobil’s Technology and Engineering division. I was focused on modeling the extraction of battery grade lithium from brine. I also gained experience in the renewable energy and green engineering fields though my internships at Tesla and West Environmental.
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Leona Neftaliem
Ph.D. Student in Environment and Resources, admitted Autumn 2022
BioLeona is pursuing a PhD in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) at Stanford University. Her current research focuses on improving tree detection methods, understanding human migration patterns in response to environmental and socioeconomic pressures, and assessing drivers of urban air quality. She approaches these topics by integrating remote sensing, quantitative surveys, and innovative environmental engineering techniques at different scales and in different cities.
Before Stanford, Leona worked as a research technician at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, where she designed technologically innovative climate change experiments. She is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and a Stanford School of Sustainability Dean’s Graduate Scholar. -
Shikha Nehra
Ph.D. Student in Anthropology, admitted Autumn 2019
BioShikha Nehra is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Stanford University. She is conducting dissertation research on the emerging idioms and forms of political belonging in India's north-eastern state of Assam. Her ethnographic and archival research in Assam explores questions of political membership for Muslim communities through its sociocultural terrain, tracing the contribution of different ethnic and literary associations in claiming recognition as indigenous or legal citizens through complex registers of language, identity and belonging. Her broader fields of interest include nationalism, populism, state and sovereignty, bureaucracy, citizenship, subjectivity, and identity-formation.
