[en:]prof. dr hab. Sławomira Żerańska-Kominek

She pursued Arabic studies in 1963–68 and musicology in 1971–1973 at the University of Warsaw, where in 1976 she received her doctoral degree. In 1987 she was granted a post-doctoral degree on the basis of the book Symbols of time and space in the music of Central Asia (Kraków 1987). In 1996 she became a professor. Since 1995 she has been the head of the Systematic Musicology Unit and since 1999 – director of the Institute of Musicology, University of Warsaw.

Her research interests focus on the traditional music of the Middle East and Central Asia as well as links between music and mythology, religion and the history of ideas. In 1988–1995 she conducted field research in Turkmenistan, which resulted in the book Opowieść o Szalonej Harman i Aszyku zakochanym w Księżycu(Kraków 1998) In 2001–2010 she carried out two interdisciplinary research projects, the results of which were published as books: Mit Orfeusza. Inspiracje i reinterpretacje w europejskiej tradycji artystycznej (Gdańsk 2003) and Muzyka ogrodzie – ogród w muzyce (Gdańsk 2010).

In Poland she initiated research into the traditions of national minorities, analysing i.a. the transformations of the musical awareness of the Lithuanian minority. In the academic textbook Muzyka w kulturze (Warsaw 1995) she summed up the achievements of international ethnomusicology.

In 2012 Sławomira Żerańska-Kominek began a new research project, devoted to the music of the Orient in the light of accounts by Polish travellers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.