Allyn Miner received a B.A. in South Asia Studies from the University of Wisconsin and subsequently lived in Varanasi, India, for most of the years between 1971 and 1982 where she studied sitar performance and musicology. In 1982 she received a Ph.D. from Banaras Hindu University for her work on the early history of the sitar and sarod. She began a performance career at that time, appearing in a number of cities and on all India radio before her return to the U.S. In 1985 she began performance training under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. She joined the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania as a Lecturer in 1988 while pursuing a Ph.D. in Sanskrit. She received her Ph.D. in 1994 from the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies for her dissertation on a 14th-century musicological text from Gujarat.

Miner has pursued an active teaching, research, and performance career.
She teaches a roster of popular courses on South Asian classical and regional music and dance at Penn has been visiting faculty at a number of other institutions including the University of Washington, New York University and Temple University. She organizes regular events and concerts and has helped make Penn a thriving center for Indian music. She has performed widely on the sitar in the U.S. and in India. Current projects include a translation of an early 20th century handbook on music by Sufi Inayat Khan, and work on music in the 16th and 17th centuries from Sanskrit, Persian, and vernacular sources.

Back to faculty list.