ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I am a third year Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology at Columbia University. The research for this project was for my Master's thesis, which I completed in May of 2006. While I worked on the Accordion Project, I continued research on nationalism and folk motifs in post-Soviet Ukrainian pop and rock music. In July of 2005, I travelled to the Carpathian mountains and interviewed musicians and civic leaders in regions where the Hutsul ethnic group is located. I focused my research on how the news of the Ukrainian pop star Ruslana's victory at the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest was received by the Hutsuls. This work was presented as a paper ("Leather, Metal, Wild Dances: Ukrainian Pop's Victory at the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest and the Politics of Auto-Exoticism") at the February 2005 meeting of the International Association for Popular Music Studies (US branch). To my great delight, the paper was awarded the honor of the best graduate student paper presented at the IASPM-US conference in 2005! In the summer of 2006, I travelled to Argentina and conducted preliminary research on the Ukrainian diaspora communities there. Currently, I'm preparing for my comprehensive exams, firming up my dissertation project ideas, and finishing course work at Columbia.

I am also a performer on the piano and accordion, associated with groups such as The Baby Pool, Anti-Social Music, Grits and Harmony, and "Dvi Zhinki." In the past, I have played with the Main Squeeze Orchestra, Romashka, and other groups around town. I have studied the accordion with Dr. William Schimmel, and finished my piano studies at the Manhattan School of Music (through the cross-registration program of Barnard College) with Mme. Nina Svetlanova.