Deborah Kapchan is an American folklorist, writer, translator and ethnographer, specializing in North Africa and its diaspora in Europe, particularly in Morocco and France.

Trained in the ethnography of speaking, she has gone on to explore how ways of listening are learned and employed in cultural performances. She advocates ethnography as a method of social transformation.

She is Professor of Performance Studies at New York University, and the former director of the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology (now the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies) at the University of Texas at Austin.

Visit her NYU webpage