Svanibor PETTAN
Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Ljubljana
Ph.D., University of Maryland; M.A., University of Ljubljana; B.A., University of Zagreb

 

Svanibor Pettan is Professor and chair in ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, President of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) and Chair of its Study Group on Music and Minorities.

He completed his studies at the Universities of Zagreb, Croatia (BA), Ljubljana, Slovenia (MA), and Maryland, USA (Ph.D.), while his fieldwork sites include former Yugoslav countries, Australia, Egypt, Norway, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and the USA. His principal research topics are music, politics and war, multiculturalism, minorities, gender, and applied ethnomusicology. He was the first Yugoslav ethnomusicologist to conduct research for academic degrees outside of Europe (Zanzibar in 1982, Egypt in 1986-87).

His professional career includes full-time posts as a radio editor (1984-88), a scholar in a research institute (1988-98), and a professor at a music academy (1995-2003), department of ethnology and cultural anthropology (2003-05) and department of musicology (2005-). Within the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM), he served as the national representative of Croatia and Slovenia, Chair of the Programme Committee of the 38thWorld Conference, co-founder, Vice-Chair and Chair of the Study Group on Music and Minorities, founder and Chair of the Study Group on Applied Ethnomusicology, member of the Executive Board, Secretary General, and Vice-President (current). He was a member of the Council of the Society for Ethnomusicology, and twice President of the Cultural and Ethnomusicological Society Folk Slovenia.

Svanibor Pettan was a visiting professor at many renowned universities in Europe and USA, and he has given almost 100 invited lectures at universities or research institutes on other continents as well.

His membership on past and present editorial boards of scholarly publications include: Bloomsbury (ex Continuum) Encyclopaedia of Popular Music of the World (UK), Ethnomusicology Forum (UK), Etnomuzika (Ukraine), Glasba v šoli in vrtcu (Slovenia), Journal of Urban Culture Research (Thailand), Music and Arts in Action (UK), Muzika (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Muzikološki zbornik (Slovenia), Narodna umjetnost (Croatia), Pax Sonoris (Russia), Sound Ethnographies (Italy), Tradicija ir darbartis (Lithuania), TNNUA Artistica (Taiwan), Traditiones (Slovenia), The World of Music (Germany), and Translingual Discourses in Ethnomusicology (Austria).

Svanibor Pettan has led the organizing team of international annual symposia in Ljubljana since 2011 and the fundamental research project on minority musics in Slovenia (2017-20). He is a recipient of awards from Turksoy, the Musicological Society of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the University of Ljubljana (including Life Achievement Award in 2018).
Oxford University Press has published three books rooted in the Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology, which he co-edited with Jeff Todd Titon: Theory, Method, Sustainability, and Conflict; Public Ethnomusicology, Education, Archives, and Commerce; and De-Colonisation, Heritage, and Advocacy.