LOS ANGELES — Melissa Bilal, a leading scholar of Armenians in Turkey and director of UCLA’s Armenian Music Program, has been appointed the inaugural holder of The Promise Chair in Armenian Music, Arts, and Culture at UCLA. Bilal is renowned for her work on the history of Armenian music.
The endowed chair, made possible by a gift to The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, will support scholarly research, undergraduate and graduate courses in Armenian music, and academic conferences on Armenian music and performing arts.
“We are grateful for this investment in our ongoing work to deepen understanding of Armenian culture, which will further UCLA’s position as a leader in Armenian studies,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “One of our core responsibilities as an academic institution is to foster a sense of global citizenship and cultural understanding, and expanding our faculty and scholarship in this area is one way we are bringing that commitment to life.”
With a legacy of scholarship on Armenia and its diaspora that dates back more than 50 years, UCLA has established itself as one of the largest and most vibrant centers for Armenian studies outside of Armenia. The new Promise Chair, housed in The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, joins two other endowed chairs at UCLA devoted to the study of Armenia and Armenians. The Narekatsi Chair of Armenian Studies, the oldest endowed chair at UCLA, established in 1969, anchors the program in Armenian language and culture. The Armenian Educational Foundation endowed a chair in the history department in 1987, which in 2011 was renamed the Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History.
“UCLA has long been a leading place for Armenian studies, and it is also a great place for collaboration with other artists and scholars,” Bilal said. “The establishment of this chair will allow us to further expand our offerings for undergraduate and graduate students.”
Bilal holds a doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago and advanced degrees from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. She has been a visiting scholar of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and held a Mellon postdoctoral teaching fellowship at Columbia University.
