Philip Geisler obtained a degree in Journalism and Media Economics at the Medienakademie Berlin before studying Art History, Islamic Studies, and Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin and at Harvard University. His dissertation explores how performance shifts spaces, narratives, and practices of museum displays of Islamic art in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Philip has published on early modern Ottoman architecture and urban configurations, Islamic crafts, museums and consumer culture, the connections of architecture, colonial visual culture, and dance heritage, and on contemporary architectural branding and place making in the United Arab Emirates. From 2013 to 2019, he worked at the Forum Transregionale Studien as a member of the research program Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices. He is a recipient of the Ottoman & Turkish Studies Association’s Sydney N. Fisher Prize, the Krupp Foundation Fellowship, and is a former fellow of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. In 2022, he was a fellow at the 4A_Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics, a joint program of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, where he prepared an exhibition on the ecology, art history, and sonic aesthetics of the reed flute (nay) (2024) and the sonic display and music programming of the exhibition Rhythm and Color: Music Scenes on Indian Album Paintings from the 16th to 18th Centuries at Berlin’s Museum of Islamic Art (2023). In 2023, he was a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Art & Art History and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University. 

As a music dramaturg, he co-founded and co-directs the trans-traditional Trickster Orchestra, which won the German Jazz Award as Best Large Ensemble, the TONALi Award for Contemporary Music and the German Composer’s Award and which was recently honored by being accepted into the German government’s “Excellent Orchestra Landscape Germany.” Philip has previously worked for the Berlin Philharmonic as well as for jazz ensembles within the cosmos of the ECM record label. In 2020, he became an international nominator of the Aga Khan Music Awards. 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.

 Academic Membership

Historians of Islamic Art Association
Middle East Studies Association
Deutscher Verband für Kunstgeschichte