Skip to main content

Dr Ioannis Tsioulakis

BMus (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), MA, PhD (Queen’s University Belfast)

Lecturer in Anthropology

Joint pathway co-ordinator, History and Social Anthropology

 

Tel: (+44) (0)28 9097 3336

Email: i.tsioulakis@qub.ac.uk

Office: Room 302, 13 University Square

 

Ioannis Tsioulakis joined the School as a Lecturer in Anthropology in September 2013. He has previously lectured in ethnomusicology at University College Cork and University College Dublin. Ioannis completed his undergraduate studies in the Department of Music Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Following this, he specialised in ethnomusicology and social anthropology, completing his MA (2006) and PhD (2011) at Queen’s University Belfast. Ioannis’s doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Working or Playing? Power, Aesthetics and Cosmopolitanism among Professional Musicians in Athens’, concentrated on the diverse socio-cultural worlds of music-making in the Greek capital. His particular focus was on cosmopolitan aspirations among local music practitioners and the way that they affect social relations, markets of musical labour, and discourses of value and aesthetics in popular music. More specifically, Ioannis’s doctoral dissertation elaborated on the dichotomy between ‘work’ and ‘play’ and its role as a conceptual framework for the experience of professional musicking in Athens.

 

Ioannis has also worked extensively as a professional musician (pianist, arranger and composer) and a music teacher (piano and music theory). He is a founding member of the Greek band Checkmate in Two Flatswith whom he often records and performs in Greece and abroad. Ioannis is currently Secretary of the Irish National Committee of the International Council for Traditional Music, and Book Reviews’ Editor for the Irish Journal of Anthropology. 

Teaching

Performance, Power and Passion (Sem 1 - ESA2002/ESA3002)

Masters

MA Anthropologocial Methods (Sem 1 - ANT7007)

Music and Identity in the Mediterranean (Sem 2 - module code TBC)

Expressive Cultures: Sound, Text and Image (Sem 2 - ESA1001)

MA Reading and Writing in Contemporary Ethnomusicology (Sem 2 - ANT 7050)

 

Research Interests

Ioannis’s main research has focused on the impact of globalisation and the world music market upon Greek subcultures and their conceptions of musical creativity. His current research is concentrating on the cross-cultural examination of the phenomenon of music professionalism and the way that it shapes understandings of musical competence, aesthetics, and the social dynamics of local ‘scenes’.

Further research interests include:

  • The concept of the ‘social imaginary’ and its relevance to processes of music eclecticism
  • The ethnographic study of modalities of discursive resistance among music practitioners
  • The impact of the current economic/political crisis on ideas of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eclecticism within popular music-making in Greece and the wider Mediterranean

Publications

Book Chapters

2013 'The quality of mutuality: jazz musicians in the Athenian popular music industry' In: Carsten Wergin & Fabian Holt (eds). Musical Performance and the Changing City. New York: Routledge.

 

Peer Reviewed Articles

2012 (with Fiona Murphy) ‘Conversations with the Future: Creativity, Aesthetics and Industry Application in Anthropological Practice.’ Irish Journal of Anthropology, 15(2): 38-43.

2011 'Jazz in Athens: Frustrated Cosmopolitans in a Music Subculture'. Ethnomusicology Forum, 20 (2):175-199.

2011 ‘At First I Saw It as a Toy’: Life Stories, Social Consciousness and Music Ethnography'. Irish Journal of Anthropology, 14 (1):19-28.

 

Book Reviews

2010 'Book Review: Empire of dirt: the aesthetics and rituals of British indie music, by Wendy Fonarow' Irish Journal of Anthropology 13 (1) :54-56.

2009 'Book Review: Paradosiaka: music and identity in Modern Greece, by Eleni Kallimopoulou' World of Music 51 (3) :182-184.