Hande Sağlam (Mag. art. PhD) was born in Istanbul. She is the head of the audio-visual archive of the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. She studied composition at Bilkent University/Ankara, obtained her master’s degree in music theory from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and received her doctoral degree in ethnomusicology at the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology of the same university. Her dissertation was on the musical differences between Alevi and Sunni Âşıks in Sivas/Turkey.
Her research interests include music and minorities, Anatolian Âşık tradition and the musical identity of immigrants in Europe, with a special focus on Turkish immigrants in Austria, traditional music transmission methodologies, cultural memory, interculturality, bi- and multi-musicality. She has worked on a range of research projects on music and minorities, on audio-visual archives in Austria and Turkey, and on the transmission methods of traditional musics. She has organized many symposiums and written a large number of publications.
Since 2005, she is a member of the ICTMD Study Group on Music and Minorities and acts as the secretary of this group since 2017. Between 2015 and 2019 was she vice chair of the ICTMD National Committee of Austria and served there as chair between 2019 and 2021.
Since 2022 Hande Sağlam is working on a research project called “Transmission of Knowledges: The Master-Apprentice Relationship in the ÂşıkTradition” funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Program.
Conducted Research Projects:
2022-2023 Transmission of Knowledges: The Master-Apprentice Relationship in the Âşık Tradition., funded by Co-Funded Brain Circulation2 Scheme European Commission Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programe
2018-2022 Towards an alliance for distributed ethnomusicology data (funded by ASEA-Uninet)
2016-2017 Bi- Multimusicality – Changing mdw sound landscapes and their constructions” Funded by mdw
2014-2015 Music without Borders – Multilingualism in Music and Understanding the ‘Other’ and the Unfamiliar (https://www.mdw.ac.at/upload/MDWeb/ifs/downloads/Musik-ohne-Grenzen_ENG_Langfassung.pdf)
2013-2015 Music – Religion – Integration: Muslims in Styria/Austria
2010 – 2015 Digitalizing of historical records – Constructing a database and archiving digital sound materials of the IVE – mdw
2009 – 2010 Bi-musicality and intercultural dialogue at mdw
2007 – 2009 Embedded Industries. Cultural entrepreneurs in different immigrant communities of Vienna
2005 – 2007 Immigrant Music in Vienna – Musical identity and the acculturation process of immigrants in Vienna
Teaching experience (selection):
University of Vienna – Department of Musicology: “Transcription and Analysis”, “Introduction to Music from Turkey”, “Makam Music in Turkey”
mdw: “Introduction to Field Research”, “Field Research Practice” “Field Research at Viennese Schools”, “European Folk Music”
Kärntner State Conservatory “Introduction to Ethnomusicology”,
Mimar Sinan University State Conservatory – Ethnomusicology Department: “Current Studies in Ethnomusicology”, “Research Projects in Ethnomusicology”.
