Prof. Dr. F. Gülay Mirzaoğlu is Professor at the Department of Turkish Folklore, Hacettepe University in Ankara, Türkiye. Mirzaoğlu, has graduated with a first degree from Department of Turkish Folklore at Hacettepe University, in 1989 and she was awarded with İhsan Doğramacı Achievement Award. She received master degree on Minstrel Tales from Çukurova Region in 1994 and PhD degree with the dessertation on Zeybek Songs and Dances from Western Anatolia at Hacettepe University in 2000.

Her research interests cover Turkish folk literature, folk music, folk songs and dances, musical traditions and women folklore. She has several international publications on Turkish musical folklore and she participated in numerous international congresses, conferences, symposiums in Turkey, many Asian and European countries and USA. She also organized international conferences and congresses’ on Traditional Music Culture, Turkish Culture and comparative folklore. One of them is 42nd International Ballad Conference of Kommission für Volksdichtung in Akyaka, Muğla, Türkiye between 7th -13th Oct.  in 2012. The last conference organized by Mirzaoğlu is “An international Conference on the Music Culture of the Turkic World”, in Turkestan, Kazaksthan, in 20-23 April in 2014.

Professor Mirzaoğlu gave several lectures on Turkish folklore, folk literature and musical culture as invited speaker in USA, Poland, Hungary Estonia, Russia and Kazakhstan.  She also joined the research projects on folklore, ethnography and Turkology in Hungary, Finland and Mongolia. She has been the member of Kommission für Volksdichtung (International Ballad Commission) since 2005. She is the founder and the director of the Hacettepe University Center for Traditional Musical Culture, HÜGEM.