Cypriot ethnomusicologist and researcher Dr Nicoletta Demetriou has been named one of the five Grand Prix Award winners at the 2026 European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards for her long-term ethnographic project, The Cypriot Fiddler.
The accolade, which selected Demetriou’s work in the Research category, was presented on Thursday evening during the European Heritage Summit 2026 at the Nicosia Municipal Theatre.
The Cypriot Fiddler is the culmination of more than 15 years of intensive fieldwork and interviews conducted by Demetriou with both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot traditional musicians.
The project, which includes a documentary film, a book, and an open-access archive website, roots its origins in Demetriou’s 2005–2006 doctoral research at SOAS, University of London. It was later developed under a research fellowship at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, between 2012 and 2019, and supported by a British Academy / Leverhulme Trust grant alongside a community crowdfunding campaign.
Demetriou’s work charts the oral histories and lived experiences of mid-twentieth-century traditional fiddlers who played at weddings and community celebrations before the island was physically and socially divided.
By recording the musicians in their native dialect, the project preserves localised idiolects and musical terminology that are rarely documented in writing.
Given that many of the ageing instrumentalists have passed away since fieldwork began, the initiative has been praised by the Europa Nostra jury for its urgent, bottom-up methodology in safeguarding a shared intangible heritage and fostering intercommunal coexistence.
In her acceptance speech Demetriou said: “Many thanks to Europa Nostra, to Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Nicosia for nominating the project, and to the jury members for choosing The Cypriot Fiddler over many other worthy contestants. And, of course, many thanks to all the fiddlers and their families, who, over more than twenty years, have opened their homes to me, and have allowed me to record and publish their stories.
In the past few days, I have often joked that The Cypriot Fiddler might well be the poorest project ever to have received a Europa Nostra award. And I think this might be true: in over ten years, the project received no more than €10.600 – the first chunk through an online crowdsourcing campaign. This is truly a project by the people, for the people.
More than twenty years after the first interviews for The Cypriot Fiddler were conducted, I can now safely say that this is a victory of listening over talking, of waiting over rushing, of patience over haste. And this is most definitely a victory of persevering, a victory born out of love. The fiddlers may be mostly gone now, but their stories will live on forever. This award belongs to them.”
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