Yaprak Melike Uyar is an ethnomusicologist. Her main research interests are jazz and popular musics of Turkey, and the music of the Mevlevi Order of Sufism. With her dissertation on Jazz in Turkey: The Cultural Connotations and the Processes of Localization, she earned her PhD degree in musicology from the Turkish Music State Conservatory of Istanbul Technical University. She completed her M.A. degree in ethnomusicology at ITU MIAM, with her thesis on The Commodification of Whirling Dervish Rituals. She worked at Turkish Music State Conservatory as a lecturer for six years, and taught the courses of History of Popular Music, Jazz Appreciation, History of Turkish Popular Music, and Popular Music Studies. She also worked as a part-time lecturer at Bilgi University, where she taught History of Jazz, and Music and Gender. Yaprak Melike is also a DJ, performing at various venues in Istanbul with an eclectic genre selection ranging from afro-beat to disco, psychedelia to jazz. She hosted radio programs at Turkish National Radio, Acik Radio, and Radio Adidas Originals. Recently, she is an Einstein Junior Fellow at the Transcultural Musicology Department of Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. In the summer semesters, she delivers a course entitled Musics of Turkey: Modernization and Hybridity at the same institution.
