Regula Qureshi (nee Anna Burckhardt) was born to Swiss parents in Basel, Switzerland, July 13, 1929. She became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1968 when she followed her husband, a political scientist from India, to the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Regula Qureshi is a renowned ethnomusicologist, teacher and cellist. She completed her M.A. in German literature and linguistics in Pennsylvania (1962), her MiMUS in musicology at the University of Alberta (1973), and her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Alberta (1981). She studied cello 1958-1960 at the Curtis Institute, and Music history and ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta in 1963. She also studied the sarangi with Ustad Hamid Hussain (1968-9) and with Ustad Sabri Khan (1984-5). She was the first woman to master the sarangi and in doing so, she paved the way for other women in South Asia and elsewhere to enter a realm that had been previously gender restricted.

Regula Qureshi was a research associate with the Royal Alberta Museum, then the Provincial Museum and Archives of Alberta (1970-1972), during which time she collected and recorded examples of the province’s ethnic folk music with the intent of depositing them in the Archives. She joined the University of Alberta’s music department in 1983 as a McTaggart Fellow and was appointed professor in 1991. She subsequently became an adjunct professor in the department of anthropology in 1991, religious studies in 1992, and East Asian studies in 1993. Qureshi was associate dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research 1994-1996. Regula Qureshi founded the University of Alberta’s Centre for Ethnomusicology in 1992, which was renamed the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology in 2002. She also directed its Folkways Alive project beginning in 2004. Qureshi was named professor emeritus of music in 2005.