Biography
Curator and museum professional since 1996, notably at Expo’98, Lisbon, and at the science department of Calouste Gulbenkian foundation. A graduate in Musicology (1992), and post-graduate in Popular Music Studies (2011), she is now working on her doctorate in Ethnomusicology/ Museology under the supervision of Professor Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and co-supervision of Dr. Noel Lobley, McIntire Department of Music, University of Virginia. Her experience resulted in publications about written communication for museum exhibitions and visitor studies, and about comingling music studies with museum studies. Conducted field research and discourse analysis research in Portugal on popular music exhibitions for museums leading to her masters’ thesis Popular music exhibitions in Portugal: practices of representation from 2008 to 2013. Is seeking to effectively communicate scientific knowledge about music in museums and to bring innovative and significant contributions to the sector by broadening the practice of exhibiting and interpreting musical sound in museums: her research interests address ethnomusicology, sound studies, museum studies, narratives in music museums, discourse analysis, musical sound as an artefact, phonogram collections and sonorous archives, and music material collections. Runs the blog www.objectsofsound.com, distinguished by the publisher MuseumsETC to integrate the publication The Museum Blog Book (2017).
Doctoral Project
Title
Exhibiting the knowable in museums through sound epistemologies: a new genre for museums.
Advisor
Abstract
The confluence of three phenomena has been prompting a serious reflection on how music should be represented and displayed in museums: the growing worldwide recognition of music as heritage, in part stimulated by UNESCO’s Convention for the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; the potential of music for an in-depth study of societies revealed by Ethnomusicology; the acknowledgment of the importance of sound in arousing emotion, memory work and in creating a sense of belonging in museums experiences. This project aims at fostering and broadening the practices of museums that focus on music heritage striving to shift from their exclusive exhibition of material culture to the challenge of exhibiting sound, namely through sound epistemologies. Two lines of inquiry are developed: an interdisciplinary analysis of music museums in Portugal will be put into perspective with an in-depth study of English practice of delivering sound in exhibitions; and the conception of an innovative exhibition to celebrate music as heritage in museums, thus shifting from an exclusively visual paradigm to a visual and aural one. Musical sound will be used through two approaches, which I understand of crucial importance in any contemporary assessment of meaning and value: as an artifact, through the delivery of its historical, musical, economic, social and political information, and as an object of aesthetic contemplation.
AdvisorSalwa Castelo-Branco and Noel Lobley (co-advisor)AbstractThe confluence of three phenomena has been prompting a serious reflection on how music should be represented and displayed in museums: the growing worldwide recognition of music as heritage, in part stimulated by UNESCO’s Convention for the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; the potential of music for an in-depth study of societies revealed by Ethnomusicology; the acknowledgment of the importance of sound in arousing emotion, memory work and in creating a sense of belonging in museums experiences. This project aims at fostering and broadening the practices of museums that focus on music heritage striving to shift from their exclusive exhibition of material culture to the challenge of exhibiting sound, namely through sound epistemologies. Two lines of inquiry are developed: an interdisciplinary analysis of music museums in Portugal will be put into perspective with an in-depth study of English practice of delivering sound in exhibitions; and the conception of an innovative exhibition to celebrate music as heritage in museums, thus shifting from an exclusively visual paradigm to a visual and aural one. Musical sound will be used through two approaches, which I understand of crucial importance in any contemporary assessment of meaning and value: as an artifact, through the delivery of its historical, musical, economic, social and political information, and as an object of aesthetic contemplation.Research Group: Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies