On April 24, 2025, the Northern California chapter of the American Musicological Society (NorCal AMS) announced that Rubina Hovhannisyan—a graduate student in the Department of Music—was the recipient of the NorCal Prize in Musicology for her paper “Why Organ? Forming the Veneto-Cretan Identity.” Speaking on Rubina's paper, NorCal AMS said "Her research demonstrated that the pipe organ’s symbolic and physical characteristics made it an ideal tool for bringing the Greek Orthodox population on Crete into closer alignment with the Republic—an important political goal following the 1570 Ottoman conquest of Cyprus."
We in the Music Department offer our congratulations to Rubina for this accomplishment and look forward to her continued work in Musicology!