Margaret Sarkissian

Margaret Sarkissian is Professor of Music at Smith College, where she teaches courses in ethnomusicology and anthropology. She is affiliated with the Department of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences and is currently President of the Society for Asian Music, reflecting her leadership in the field.

• Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
• M.M., University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
• B.Mus., King’s College, University of London

Her research focuses on the musical traditions of the Malaysian-Portuguese and Straits Chinese communities in Melaka, Malaysia, as well as Armenian diasporic music in Toronto and Chicago. She has also conducted fieldwork in Japan and on Islamic popular music in Malaysia. Her work bridges ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology, and performance studies, emphasizing identity, heritage, and postcolonial dynamics in musical expression.

The available publications show a long-standing interest in colonial and postcolonial musical dissemination, ethical dimensions in ethnomusicological research, and the interplay between personal and professional identities in fieldwork. Her scholarship spans historical, ethnographic, and performative approaches.

She is the author of D’Albuquerque’s Children: Performing Tradition in Malaysia’s Portuguese Settlement (2000) and co-author of Living Ethnomusicology: Paths and Practices (2019). She has also produced a CD and booklet, Kantiga di Padri să Chang, contributing to both academic and public understandings of cultural music traditions.

Margaret Sarkissian advises students in ethnomusicology and related areas, though specific names are not listed. Her ongoing projects include a social history of post-Independence Malaysia through the lives of three musicians and a memoir of pioneering Malaysian musician Horace Sta. Maria. She performs regularly on accordion with the 1511 O Maliao Maliao Cultural Troupe when in Malaysia.

She is actively involved in academic leadership as President of the Society for Asian Music and continues to publish and conduct field research, indicating a vibrant and current scholarly trajectory.