# Bilen Işıktaş 2025 – 2026 Visiting Scholar ![Bilen Işıktaş](/sites/g/files/omnuum12086/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2026-03/Dr.%20Bilen%20Is%CC%A7%C4%B1ktas%CC%A7.jpg.jpeg?h=038d1da4&itok=lCM4-2m_) email Bilen Işıktaş is a Professor of Musicology at the Istanbul University State Conservatory and currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Music at Harvard University. An oud performer and musicologist, his work explores Turkish music history, the maqam tradition, music sociology, and the processes of cultural modernization that shaped musical life during the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. Alongside his research, Işıktaş maintains an active international performance career, appearing in concerts and festivals across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including Belgium, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. His performances have included culturally significant venues such as the UNESCO Permanent Representation in Paris in 2014, as well as major international festivals, including the 4th Katara International Oud Festival at the Opera House in Qatar and the 26th International Oud Festival in Tetouan, Morocco. In 2009 he represented Turkey in the EU project MELT (Migration in Europe and Local Tradition) in Munich and received second prize at the International Oud Competition organized by the Arab Music Academy and USEK in Beirut. His work has been presented at international conferences, including the ASN World Convention at Columbia University in 2015. He is the author of several books and scholarly articles on Turkish music; notably, his 2018 book on the oud virtuoso Şerif Muhiddin Targan received the Turkish Writers’ Union Award in the biography category, and his most recent book, Sounds of the Early Republic: The Political Economy of Music in 1930s Turkey. At Harvard, his research, mentored by Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay, examines Turkish music in the late 1920s and 1930s through recordings preserved in the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library. The project investigates Turkish musicians in the United States, highlighting early diaspora sound recordings as field-like documents, exploring multilingual repertoires, and analyzing how migration, recording technologies, and transnational exchange shaped alternative narratives within Turkish musical traditions. - ## Person Categories [Research Visitors](/person-categories/research-visitors)