Rui Vieira Nery

Portuguese Guest

Rui Vieira Nery was born in Lisbon in 1957. He studied music in Lisbon, first at the Academia de Música de Santa Cecília and later at the Lisbon Conservatory. He holds a Licenciateship in History from the Lisbon University (1980) and a Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Texas at Austin (1990), which he attended as a Fulbright Scholar and a grantee of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He teaches at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and has supervised numerous masters and doctoral dissertations in Portuguese, French and Spanish universities. He is a senior researcher of the Ethnomusicology Institute – Centre for Music and Dance Studies and of the Centre for Theatre Studies. He is currently Director of the Gulbenkian Programme for Portuguese Language and Culture at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. As a musicologist and cultural historian he published numerous studies on Portuguese music history, two of which received the Musicology Award of the Portuguese Music Council (1984 and 1992), as well as many scholarly essays in Portuguese and international journals and collective works. He is also active as a lecturer in Portugal, various European countries, Brazil and the USA. From 1995 to 1997 he served as Secretary of State for Culture in the Portuguese government and is now an individual member of the Portuguese National Cultural Council, the main advisory board to the Minister of Culture. He was chairman of the Scientific Committee of the nomination of Fado to the UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and of the restoration of the six historical organs of the Convent of Mafra, as well as a National Commissioner for the Commemorations of the Centenary of the Portuguese Republic. He is a Corresponding Member of the Portuguese History Academy and was awarded in 2002 the grade of Commander of the Order of Henry the Navigator for services rendered to the study of Portuguese culture. He was made an Honorary Member of the Iberian and Latin-American Arts Forum and received the 2012 International Intangible Heritage Award of the Centro Internacional de Conservación del Patrimonio and the Gold Medal of the City of Lisbon.