Maria Espírito Santo

Biography

Maria do Espírito Santo is a PhD researcher and integrated member of INET-md (NOVA FCSH). She completed her PhD in Musical Sciences (Ethnomusicology) at NOVA FCSH with the dissertation Performação simbólica da nação portuguesa: Ada de Castro e o Culto Fadista de Lisboa, in which she examines fado as a device for producing belonging, memory, and the symbolic legitimation of cultural narratives about the nation.

Her research brings together ethnomusicology, heritage studies, and critical approaches to cultural mediation, focusing on fado, its foundational myths (such as the Severa case), processes of heritagisation, and the relations between music, tourism, and urban regeneration. She has authored articles and book chapters on fado, archives, and representation, and regularly presents her work in national and international academic contexts. More recently, she has been developing research interests in the postcolonial context of Goa, particularly in the role of music in cultural mediation and in the circulation of Portuguese-language song.

Alongside her academic work, she is engaged in curatorial and public outreach activities: she curated the exhibition “Ada de Castro – Se Deus me deu voz foi para cantar”  (Aveiro, 2023) and is the creator and host of the weekly radio programme Perdida na Música on Rádio Radar. She is also a saxophonist, with training in specialist artistic education.