Neil van der Linden is from the Netherlands. He curates music, theater, and visual arts projects related to the Middle East and North Africa, notably in the UAE, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, and Iraq, and furthermore in India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, and of course the Netherlands. He was dramaturg at the Rotterdam Municipal Theatre Company and the «Holland Festival». He worked as music advisor and events developer with Paradiso Amsterdam and the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam. He founded the online Gulf Art Guide website and Facebook page.

He regularly writes reviews and articles both on Western «classical» music as well as «world music» for various magazines and newspapers, for instance Songlines and the UAE’s The National. Currently, he is carrying out research on the musical legacy of East-African slavery across the Indian Ocean and into the various Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and sub-continental empires.

He co-curated an electronic music festival in Abu Dhabi for New York University and Once Upon Design: «New Routes for Arabian Heritage» in Sharjah. He curated the «Sounds of Arabia Festival» in Abu Dhabi, the «Gulf Music Festival» for the Brownbook magazine Dubai, and music festivals inside the «Abu Dhabi International Book Fair» including a festival of indigenous music of the Gulf states. Currently, for a museum in Mannheim, Germany, he is collaborating for an exhibition on self-Orientalization in popular audiovisual culture.