Kathryn (Katie) Minyoung Cooke graduated from Columbia College in 2019 and received Music Departmental Honors for her thesis "The Ministry of Love: An Exploration of Turkish Contemporary Christian Music.” Katie’s doctoral dissertation focuses on the musical manifestations of the kinship between Türkiye, South Korea, and their respective geographic and religious diasporas.
Katie’s works have been published in Religions and Yale Journal of Music & Religion and she has presented her research at Sound Check! Festival and Christian Congregational Music: Local & Global Perspectives Conference. Her favorite part of academia is teaching and she was honored to be a finalist for the Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2025.
Katie is the Co-Editor for Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology, the student journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. On top of her academic pursuits, Katie is the worship director at City on a Hill Church, as well as an avid illustrator and photographer.
