My research, titled Sounding Port-Oil Encounters: Music, Memory, and Infrastructure on the Persian Gulf Coast, Iran, explores how the rise and decline of port and oil infrastructures in the Persian Gulf region have shaped the musical traditions and sonic memories of Iran's Persian Gulf coast port cities. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Bushehr, Abadan, and Khorramshahr, I examine how musical practices in these liminal urban spaces are intertwined with a range of contradictory legacies, such as war, migration, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and the enduring impacts of Black slavery. At the core of my research is the entanglement of these legacies, which continue to shape musical embodiment, memory, and imaginations. By positioning these musical traditions within the broader dynamics of the Indian Ocean world, I highlight their role as vessels for entangled memories, connectivity, and cultural transformation.
Before joining the PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania, I earned my Master’s degree in ethnomusicology at the Tehran University of Arts. My MA dissertation, A Study of Revivalist and Purist Trends in Iranian Folk Music, examined the collection, preservation, and revival of Iranian folk and regional music through the lens of various socio-political movements before the Islamic Revolution, and how post-revolutionary ideologies shaped discourses on ethnic and regional music in Iran.