Biographical note

Inês Thomas Almeida is a musicologist and researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Centre for Studies in Music and Dance (INET-md), Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal. From January to May 2025, I was the FLAD/Saab Visiting Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA.
Her research interests include 18th-century music, travel accounts, women in music, traditional balladry, and transnational cultural networks.
Currently, she is developing her research project FEMUS 18 – Female Music Practice in 18th-Century Portugal, which is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology for the period 2024–2030.

She has been invited to give lectures at universities such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Madrid and Vienna. Additonally, she actively engages as a speaker at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the National Theatre of São Carlos. In 2021, she created the seminar Women Composers: A History of Female Composition from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century, which she has been teaching in various formats at NOVA FCSH.

She serves as a guest lecturer in the PhD programme in Gender Studies at NOVA FCSH / ISCSP-UL / NOVA School of Law. Furthermore, she is the Co-Coordinator of the Thematic Research Line on Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (INET-md) and the Science Communication Coordinator of the COST Action PCPSce – Print Culture and Public Spheres in Central Europe (1500–1800). This European-funded project runs from 2024–2028 involving 160 researchers from 36 countries.

Inês Thomas Almeida was a postdoctoral researcher between 2022 and 2004 at the Institute for the Study of Literature and Tradition (IELT/NOVA FCSH). In this context, she joined the team of RELIT-Rom – Literary Revisions: The Creative Application of Early Novels (15th–18th centuries), and was responsible for creating, developing, and implementing a catalog of the musicalized versions of ancient ballads in Portuguese literature.

She was the Deputy Curator of the exhibition Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão (1923–1989): we will take risks, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2023. She also co-authored, with Rui Vieira Nery, the book Vamos Correr Riscos: Textos escolhidos de Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian & Tinta-da-China, 2023).

Trivia

Inês Thomas Almeida lived in Germany from 2003 to 2016 and created a NGO for the Portuguese community in Berlin. In this context, she was responsible for numerous cultural, social and humanitarian initiatives, as well as for their funding, having been distinguished by several institutions for her work on behalf of the community. She was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Portugal. She studied Piano for 12 years and has a degree in Opera Singing.

Type 1 Diabetes

Inês Thomas Almeida is the proud mother of two boys. One of them has Type-1 Diabetes (T1D), a non curable, auto-immune disease with a profound impact in the lives of patients and families. With the advances on scientific research and the discovery of insulin in 1921, T1D stopped being a death sentence and is now manageable thanks to permanent (24/7) monitoring, medication, planning, and the support of a community of caregivers and professionals. If you live in Portugal and someone you know is affected by T1D, please consider donating to APDP (Associação Protectora dos Diabéticos de Portugal).

CV & more:

• NOVA Research
• ORCID
• Ciência Vitae
• Scopus
• Google Scholar
• Academia.edu