HANS DE ZEEUW began to take bağlama lessons and became interested in its long and fascinating history while working at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and studying at the Open University. This led him to decide to break off his studies and focus, for many years, on research into the Turkish bağlama under the supervision of Dr L.J. Plenckers of the Department of Musicology of the University of Amsterdam and Dr Okan Murat Öztürk of the Devlet Konservatuvarı of the Başkent Üniversitesi in Ankara. In 2009 he published De Turkse Langhalsluit of bağlama (Turkish Long-Necked Lute or Bağlama) with the support of the Dutch Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. His lecture to the Uluslararası Müzik Kongresi in Istanbul in 2006 was published in Türkiyede Müzik Kültürü in 2011. A short article about the Ottoman tanbûr, The Ottoman Tanbûr: Introducing the Long-Necked Lute of Ottoman Classical Music, followed in 2018 in Expedition, a magazine of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthroplogy. He is planning an in-depth study about the Ottoman tanbûr for the near future.