Dr Razia Sultanova is an ethnomusicologist, professor, scholar, and author whose lifelong research examines music, culture, gender, and religion across Central Asia, the Turkic-speaking world, and the Balkans. Her scholarship places particular emphasis on female voices and perspectives in traditional and spiritual performance, while her work on Balkan music explores the region’s diverse musical traditions, cultural identities, and histories of exchange.

She is currently a Professorial Fellow at Cambridge Muslim College, Visiting Professor at Charles University in Prague, and Research Fellow at Sarajevo University. Having studied and subsequently taught at the Tashkent and Moscow State Conservatories, she moved to the UK in 1994 and has since developed an extensive international academic career. Sultanova serves as Chair of the ICTM Study Group on “Global History of Music” and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopaedia of the Turkic-Speaking World. She is the author of four books and editor of five volumes in Russian, French, and English, and has received twenty-two international research grants from institutions including the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, IFEAC, the British Council, AHRC, and the British Academy.