Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, Ceyda Çekmeci completed her B.A. in Sociology at Boğaziçi University (2016) and her M.A. in Musicology at Istanbul Technical University, Center for Advanced Studies in Music (2019). In the meantime, she worked as a choir conductor in various public and private institutions, most notably at the Music for Peace Foundation (El Sistema Turkey) which also formed the basis of her master’s thesis entitled “Music as Mediating the Self and the Social: An Ethnographic Field Study at the Music for Peace Foundation, El Sistema Turkey”. Her doctoral work at UC Berkeley deals with music in Turkey in the past 21 years under the political Islamist AKP regime. Her broader research interests include music and politics, music in authoritarian contexts, aesthetics of political regimes, and theories on culture, power, and affect.