Ethnomusicology
sophiazervas@g.harvard.edu
Sophia Zervas is a third-year PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology. A Colorado native, she graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2020 with double BM degrees in piano and voice performance. While an undergraduate student, she also inaugurated the CU College of Music’s honors thesis program with research on arabesk, a genre of Turkish urban popular music. Specifically, she explored shifting conceptions of Turkish nationalism through politicians’ interactions with arabesk music and musicians.
At Harvard, Sophia has continued to pursue work on music and politics in Turkey, focusing on cultural policy of the past 20 years. More broadly, she is interested in topics of modernism, nationalism, populism, and popular music in the Balkans and the Levant. Outside of the music department, she is pursuing a secondary field in Anthropology and is affiliated with the Weatherhead Center of International Affairs, where she is a Graduate Student Associate.