Philip Kueppers

Philip Kueppers (born in 1978 in Dortmund, Germany) is the director of the Goethe-Institut in Dakar, Senegal.

Kueppers was also the director of the Goethe-Institute in Bangladesh. Before joining Goethe-Institut he was a lecturer and researcher at the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar, Germany. He was also a visiting lecturer at the Pedagogical and Technological University in Tunja, Colombia.

He began his career in audio engineering which saw him running a recording studio in Berlin. Kueppers went on to study musicology and international relations at Humboldt University Berlin, University of Bath (UK) and the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

After graduating, he worked in the sphere of ethnomusicology where he did fieldwork in countries such as Azerbaijan, Brazil, the US, Tanzania and Turkey.

He is the founder of the Afghanistan Music Research Centre where he curated various music events. Since 2013, Kueppers has served as a board member of Rudolstadt Festival, which is one of Germany’s biggest folk, roots and world music gatherings.