Hannaneh Akbarpour (she/her) is a first-year Ph.D. student in Ethnomusicology. Her research interests include the intersections of power, religion, identity, and popular music. She holds a B.A. in Iranian Music Performance (Oud instrument) from Art University of Tehran and an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from University of Tehran. Her master’s thesis, “The Identity-formative Role of the Iranian Popular Music in Two Decades Following the Islamic Revolution”, focuses on Iran’s post-revolutionary era, when consumption and production of popular music, as a component of the former pop culture, was confined by the Islamic state. She explores how the new popular music, which was produced in the Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles, affected the cultural identity of Iranians inside the country.
Hannaneh is a graduate fellow at RITM (The Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration). She has been an Orff approach teacher for several years. Outside of music she used to be a Red Crescent volunteer. Hannaneh is interested in Arabic and Persian poetry, and growing houseplants.