Biography
Justin Balcor, a third year PhD student and FLAS Fellow, holds a BA in Music (Percussion) from Berea College, an MME (Music Education) from Eastern Kentucky University, and an MA in Musicology and Ethnomusicology from the University of Kentucky. Justin previously served as the director of the African Drum Ensemble at Centre College (Danville, KY), Kentucky Refugee Ministries’ Children’s Choir, and SambaLEX in Lexington, KY. His doctoral work focuses on musical instruments, national/gender identity, and musical constructions of masculinity in the Republic of Georgia, with a secondary emphasis on Sub-Saharan African music performance and pedagogy, particularly Ewe percussion and Zimbabwean mbira. Justin recently gave presentations at the annual Society for Ethnomusicology Conference in 2020, as well as Race and Racism in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies: A Roundtable at the University of Illinois, on the topics of racism and the risks/experiences of BIPOC scholars conducting research in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Research Interests
Music of the Caucasus, Sub-Saharan African Music, Race and Gender, and Organology
Education
Ph.D. Musicology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL In Progress
M.A. Musicology/Ethnomusicology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY December 2016
M.M.E. Music Education, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY September 2012
B.A. General Music, Berea College, Berea, KY September 2010
Grants
Kresge MiniGrant - Winter 2016-Spring 2017
Awards and Honors
Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship - Summer 2018, Summer 2019, Summer 2020, Academic Year 2019-2020, and Academic Year 2020-2021
