Erol Köymen

Assistant Professor of Musicology Erol Köymen is an ethnographer of music and sound interested in how listening shapes modes of embodiment and belonging in modern Turkey and Turkish diaspora. His theoretical interests include religion and secularity, post- and inter-imperiality, and populism and social class, and he engages analytical approaches to sound and social life rooted in atmosphere studies and Peircian semiotics. Methodologically, he is committed to historically-informed ethnographic methods and has conducted extended field research in Turkey and Germany.

His current book project, Listening for Secular Bodies in Turkish Inter-imperiality, examines how practices of listening to Western classical music discursively shape secular bodily attunements and modes of urban belonging in Istanbul amidst intersecting legacies of European and Ottoman imperiality. Additional publications have appeared or are forthcoming in Ethnomusicology, The Journal of Middle East Studies, Current Musicology, and World of Music.

Prior to his appointment at Florida State University, Koymen held a visiting professor position at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago.