Maria Papapavlou is Professor of Ethnomusicology-Music cultures of the Mediterranean at the Faculty of Music Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She was born in Switzerland and studied piano and music theory at the National Conservatory of Athens. She graduated from the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies of the University of Crete (1994). She holds a Ph.D. from the Institut für Ethnologie of Leipzig University in Germany (2000). She has conducted ethnomusicological fieldworks in Spain and Greece. She conducted extended fieldwork among Gitanos and non Gitanos flamenco artists in Andalusia (Spain). She also conducted fieldwork in the city of Rethymno (Crete-Greece) investigating the relations between emigrants and the local community, as well as the role of carnival music and dance in the construction of identities. She also conducted extended fieldwork during the occupation of Syntagma Square in 2011 focusing on the relations between music and social movements. Her current research interests focus on the relation of music with the transcendental, phenomenology of music and sound and historical and ethnographical interrelations between musics of western Mediterranean.