Lisa Urkevich

She is the former professor of musicology and ethnomusicology, and founding division head (dean) of the arts and humanities and chair of the music and drama department at the American University of Kuwait (2004-2023).

Urkevich is a two-time Senior Fulbright Scholar, the recipient of the 2015 University of Maryland Alumna of the Year Award, a Harvard University Fellow, and the author of numerous publications including the "pioneering work," Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar (Routledge, 2015).

Such adversity made research all the more challenging, but Urkevich uniquely managed to investigate the music and traditions of a variety of diverse peoples across the vast region, covering thousands of kilometers.

Throughout the years, she engaged in rare investigation of the musical worlds of both men and women, the wealthy and disadvantaged, badu-hadhar (bedouin and settled), those from mountains, villages, deserts, and cities.

"Urkevich presents a compelling narrative (and in many ways more interesting than Lowinsky's) that proposes, on paleographical and reportorial evidence, that the motet book was prepared in France ca.

1505–09, and was owned and prepared for a woman, possibly Marguerite d'Angoulême (sister of Francis I), or her mother, Louise of Savoy, and given to Anne, while she was in their service in France as a young girl.