Ioannis Tsioulakis

Source: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/ioannis-tsioulakis/ Parent: https://www.qub.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/anthropology-sociology-ba/

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Ioannis Tsioulakis

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3733-9385

Emaili.tsioulakis@qub.ac.uk
Room 03.002 - 13 University Square

United Kingdom

Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Popular/folk music and politics\
Creative industries, production and labour\
Performance and identity\
Globalisation, cosmopolitanism and social/political movements\
Aesthetics, genre and improvisation

2011Research output 2011: 2Research output 2012: 1Research output 2013: 1Research output 2016: 4Research output 2018: 3Research output 2019: 1Projects 2020: 1Research output 2020: 3Research output 2021: 3Research output 2022: 6Research output 2024: 1Research output 2025: 12025

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Research Interests

Ioannis Tsioulakis is Reader in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology, having joined the School in 2013. He has previously lectured in ethnomusicology at University College Cork and University College Dublin. Ioannis completed his undergraduate studies in the Department of Music Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Following this, he specialised in ethnomusicology and social anthropology, completing his MA (2006) and PhD (2011) at Queen’s University Belfast. Ioannis’s first monograph, Musicians in Crisis: Working and Playing in the Greek Popular Music Industry was published by Routledge in 2020. The book looks at the diverse socio-cultural worlds of music-making in the Greek capital with an emphasis on precarity and economic austerity. Ioannis's research has also focused on cosmopolitan aspirations among local music practitioners and the way that they affect social relations, markets of musical labour, and discourses of value and aesthetics in popular music. \

Ioannis is currently conducting research on the impact of Covid-19 on performing artists, with a number of publications and collaborative projects under development (a preliminary co-written piece with Dr Ali FitzGibbon can be found here and a piece for The Conversation here).\

Ioannis has also worked extensively as a professional musician (pianist, arranger and composer) and a music teacher (piano and music theory). He is a founding member of the Greek band Checkmate in Two Flats with whom he often records and performs in Greece and abroad

Ioannis’s main research has focused on music professionalism and the impact of globalisationon Greek subcultures and their conceptions of musical creativity. His current research is concentrating on musical labour and precarity and the way that it shapes understandings of musical competence, aesthetics, and the social dynamics of local ‘scenes’. \

Further research interests include:

The concept of the ‘social imaginary’ and its relevance to processes of music eclecticism
The ethnographic study of modalities of discursive resistance among music practitioners
The relationship between economic/political crisis and ideas of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eclecticism within popular music-making in Greece and the wider Mediterranean
Covid-19 and its impact on performing artists in Greece and Ireland

Teaching

Undergraduate

Being Creative: Music, Media and the Arts (Level 1, Sem 2 - ESA1001)

Radical Musics: Understanding Sounds of Defiance across Disciplines (Level 2, Sem 1 - HAP2000)

Music and Identity in the Mediterranean (Level 3, Sem 2 – ESA3012)

Popular Music Cultures: From Billie Holiday to the Eurovision (Level 2, Sem 1 – ETH 2009)

Postgraduate

Anthropology of Music (MA Level, Sem 2 - ANT 7013)

Advanced Anthropological Perspectives (MA Level, Sem 1 - ANT 7008)

Advanced Anthropological Methods (MA Level, Sem 2 - ANT 7009)

Ensembles

Experimental World-Fusion Ensemble

Greek Music Ensemble

Topics of MA/PhD Supervision

Popular/folk music and politics
Creative industries, production and labour
Performance and identity
Globalisation, cosmopolitanism and social/political movements
Aesthetics, genre and improvisation

Particulars

Programme Convenor for Undergraduate Programmes in Anthropology**

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1 Similar Profiles
Music Social Sciences
Musicians Arts and Humanities
Specific Industry Social Sciences
Professional Personnel Social Sciences
Greece Arts and Humanities
Crisis Arts and Humanities
Athens Arts and Humanities
Popular Music Social Sciences

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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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Projects

Tsioulakis, I. (PI) & FitzGibbon, A. (CoI)

22/06/2020 → 31/12/2020

Project: Research

Research
COVID-19
UK
Practitioners
Freelancer

Research output

5 Article
4 Chapter (peer-reviewed)
2 Chapter
1 Book
2 More
1 Book/Film/Article review
1 Special issue
1 Other contribution
Sounding imaginaries: the diverse musical aesthetics of the Greek Left’s youth festivals

Varelopoulos, D. & Tsioulakis, I., 13 Aug 2025, Essays on Music, Politics and Resistance: Sounding Empowerment. Lawlor, H. & Scahill, A. (eds.). Cambridge Scholars

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review - ### Music work and solidarity politics in the age of Covid-19: from trade unions to grassroots movements

Tsioulakis, I., 01 Oct 2024, Popular music of the Greek world. Kallimopoulou, E. & Poulos, P. C. (eds.). Athens: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Press, p. 71-93

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review

Open Access

File

181 Downloads (Pure) - ### Economic Austerity, Covid-19, and the Music Precariat in Athens, Greece

Tsioulakis, I., 21 Sept 2022, The Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology . Morcom, A. & Taylor, T. D. (eds.). Oxford University Press, p. C34.S1-C34.N10 18 p.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review