Ioannis Christidis (he/him) is a postdoctoral researcher at the MMRC through the ÖAW Post-DocTrack Fellowship. He is currently developing a research project proposal titled “Arab EDM on European Dancefloors: Music, Migration, and Sociopolitical (Dis)Engagements.”
His project aims to explore emerging scenes and electronic dance music genres created by music producers and DJs from Southwest Asia and North Africa who perform on European dancefloors, as well as their sociopolitical dimensions – particularly the role of affective experiences on the dancefloor in negotiating war and repression-related trauma, and in pursuing gender, social, artistic, and other forms of liberation.
His research interests include music and migration, music and minorities, Syrian music, Arab electronic dance music, protest music, religious music and sound, and musical acts of citizenship. Engaged ethnomusicology, with a broader research perspective contributing to understanding and addressing structural social injustices, constitutes a central principle in Christidis’ scholarly work.
Christidis completed a PhD in Ethnomusicology in 2024 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. His dissertation, “Music in the Experience of Forced Migration from Syria to the European Borderland: Two Case Studies,” investigates the role of music in the lives of Syrian forced migrants during their journeys and resettlement in Europe, with particular attention to musical responses to border regimes, refugee policies, integration frameworks, and populist anti-migration rhetoric. His PhD research was carried out at the Music and Minorities Research Center and funded through the Wittgenstein Prize awarded to Prof. Dr. Ursula Hemetek (FWF Grant DOI: 10.55776/Z352).
Christidis also holds degrees in Architecture (2010) and Music Science and Art (2017). As a musician, he plays Western classical piano and the Eastern Mediterranean oud, with a particular focus on Greek urban popular music from early 20th-century Asia Minor.