Jane Cicely Sugarman, Professor of Music, is an ethnomusicologist whose work focuses on music and identity formation within Albanian communities, but she also has a strong background in South Slavic, Turkish, and Arabic music. She is particularly known for her scholarship on music and gender, including the book Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings (1997), which was awarded the Chicago Folklore Prize by the American Folklore Society. Recent publications examine media privatization in the former Yugoslavia, musical activities in diaspora communities, and the role of music in nationalist movements and conflict situations. She is currently preparing a book on Albanian commercial music and issues of modernity. Known for work that is original in approach and meticulously researched, Sugarman received the Jaap Kunst Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2004. She holds a Ph.D. in Music from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Photo: A. Poyo