Ozan Say

Ozan Say, a native of Turkey, is a folklorist specializing in festivals, rituals, migration, and ethnoreligious identities. He received his Ph.D. in 2013 from the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Prior to coming to the U.S. to pursue a doctoral degree he earned his M.A. in History and B.A. in Business Administration from Bogazici University in Istanbul. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork in various parts of Turkey with ethnic and religious minorities and migrants from the Balkans. Recently, he has designed and taught undergraduate classes, first at Indiana University and later at Bridgewater State University, in topics ranging from ethnography of communication to mythology, and from folklore to Middle Eastern anthropology.

Throughout much of his formal education he was very involved with folk dancing and he spent most of his college years at the Bogazici University Folklore Club fulfilling various roles as dancer, choreographer, dance instructor, and production manager, and eventually becoming its President. After college, as he continued his graduate education, he became a professional dancer at the Bosphorous Performing Arts Ensemble and worked as a dance instructor at various K-12 schools in Istanbul. He has a green thumb and he loves fishing on the shores of the Aegean when he is back home.