Luka is a fifth-year PhD student in Musicology at UCLA, where his research areas include acoustic stringed instruments, histories of musical mentalities, secular religiosity, and the “New Age” aesthetic. His current work explores how sound mediates cultural conditioning, states of consciousness, and paradoxical or reciprocal forms of experience—such as sensations of timelessness, perceptual collapse, and other coincidences of opposites (metaphysical or otherwise).

He graduated from New York University with a BA in Musicology, and since 2015 has served as assistant editor and lead full-text quality coordinator at Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM). Between his studies, he has also worked as a schoolteacher, freelance musician, and radio DJ, and when he’s not being a dad, spends his spare time repairing and modifying instruments, capturing field recordings, and tinkering with anything that makes sound.