The anthropologist, multidisciplinary artist, and writer from Bern, Switzerland, is the founder and director of Norient (Norient.com) and the Norient Festival. He has co-directed documentary films, including Contradict (Berner Filmpreis 2020, Al-Jazeera Witness), and created AV/theater performances in addition to authoring and co-editing several books, such as Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut (Routledge) and The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East (Wesleyan University Press). Currently, Burkhalter's focus lies on his new music/AV duo, Melodies In My Head, and the podcast Long Take: Life as an Artist. Burkhalter teaches regularly at universities and leads workshops for arts institutions. His work combines personal and international perspectives, often in close collaboration with artists and thinkers worldwide.

His audio-visual lecture “Can We Keep the Dialogue Open? Artists, Scholars, and Journalists in a Changing World” describes the work of the Norient platform, which for 22 years has been exploring cultural phenomena and movements in and around music and sound. Their mission is to maintain an open dialogue with artists, endorse critical engagement, and foster collaboration while resisting the monopolization of cultural narratives by big companies or self-promotion. He will explain their approaches from anthropology, journalism, film, and performing arts, aiming to create new ways of telling stories that resonate, inspire, and sustain a plurality of perspectives.