Philip Geisler, M.A.

Philip Geisler is a Ph.D. candidate at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies (BGSMCS) and a Doctoral Fellow in the interdisciplinary program 4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics. He is currently completing his doctoral thesis, which explores museums and their use of collections and architecture, the performing arts, and art historiography as part of contemporary politics of knowledge and cultural debates. He has also published on early modern Ottoman architecture and urban configurations, the connections of architecture, colonial visual culture, and dance heritage, and architectural branding and place making in the contemporary Middle East. Before studying Art History, Islamic Studies, and Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin and Harvard University, he obtained a degree in Journalism and Media Economics from the Medienakademie Berlin. From 2013 to 2019, he worked at the Forum Transregionale Studien as a member of Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices, a research program in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. Philip Geisler is a recipient of the Ottoman & Turkish Studies Association’s Sydney N. Fisher Prize and is a former fellow of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. In 2023, he is a visiting researcher at Stanford University. As a music manager and dramaturg, he co-founded and co-directs the trans-traditional Trickster Orchestra, which won the German Jazz Award 2022 as Best Large Ensemble and the 2022 TONALi Award for Contemporary Music, and he has previously worked for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra as well as for jazz and contemporary music ensembles within the cosmos of the ECM record label. In his ongoing journalistic activities, he publishes in the TRAFO Blog for Transregional Research, the VAN music magazine, and hosts discussions on art, literature, and music. 

Portrait: © Bernhard Ludewig