Estelle Amy de la Bretèque

I'm an anthropologist and a musician. I conducted field research in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenia, Greece and Indonesia. I play (and occasionally teach) Eastern Mediterranean musics and Javanese gamelan.

In recent years I worked on the anthropology of the voice. I conducted research on melodized speech and narratives of sorrow among the Yezidis of Armenia (I wrote a book on that and several articles). Previously I conducted research on the Molokans of Transcaucasia, on mourning ceremonies in Baku (Azerbaijan) and on the laments of displaced Kurdish women in the suburbs of Istanbul and Diyarbakir (Turkey). I published various articles on these topics.

My current research examines the deep religious transformations in (Y)ezidism since the massacres by the Islamic State in Sinjar (2014) that led to massive emigration of the (Y)ezidis outside of the Middle East. I am conducting fieldwork in the Causasus (Armenia and Georgia) as well as among the diaspora in Eastern and Western Europe (I recently wrote a book based on a research among Êzidi refugees in Southern France). I am also conducting research in Greece on exile songs and mourning songs.