Melissa Bilal is a sociocultural anthropologist and historian specializing in music and performance studies, gender and sexuality studies, and memory studies. Her ethnographic research explores the role of music in the transmission of Armenian memory in Turkey, while her archival research is focused on the musical and intellectual history of Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire and early republican Turkey. Her most recent book manuscript is the co-authored volume Feminism in Armenian: An Interpretive Anthology (forthcoming 2025) which unearths the lives and works of twelve Armenian feminist writer-activists in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman contexts. Bilal is currently working on a biography of pianist and composer Koharik Gazarossian (1907-1967).
Ph.D. Music (Ethnomusicology), University of Chicago; M.A. Sociology, Boğaziçi University; B.A. Sociology, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.
