Dr. Michael Lukin studies the traditional culture of Yiddish speakers in eastern Europe. His dissertation, written under the supervision of Prof. Edwin Seroussi and Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem, discusses the poetics and music of the Yiddish folk song and traces the emergence of this folklore, its characteristic features and social functions. In 2019, as a Polonsky Visiting Fellow, Lukin participated in the Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies, “Between Sacred and Profane: Jewish Musical Cultures in Early Modern Europe”. In this framework he explored the so-called “mediaeval” ballad in eastern Yiddish, its resemblance to Klezmer music, and its remoteness from German balladic tradition. From 2016 to the present, he has taught courses on Jewish music, Hassidic musical thought, and Yiddish verbal folklore at Sapir Academic College and Bar Ilan University. His new project is dedicated to the aesthetics and semiotics of traditional eastern Ashkenazi music, with a special emphasis on the cantorial art, paraliturgical singing, Klezmer improvisation and Yiddish lyric folk song. The project aims to shed light on these repertoires’ affinities with the western European heritage, as well as with their Slavic surroundings and with Jewish music from the Ottoman realm.