Rui Vieira Nery was born in Lisbon in 1957 and began his musical studies at the Academia de Música de Santa Cecília, continuing his studies at the National Conservatory of Lisbon. Graduated in History from the Faculty of Arts of Lisbon (1980), he received a PhD in Musicology from the University of Texas at Austin (1990), which he attended as a Fulbright Scholar and a fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Associate Professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, he has supervised a vast number of masters and doctorates in Portuguese, Spanish and French universities. He is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Center for Music and Dance Studies and at the Center for Theater Studies. At the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, he was Deputy Director of the Music Service (1992-2008) and Director of the Gulbenkian Education for Culture Program (2008-2012), and is currently Director of the Gulbenkian Portuguese Language and Culture Program (since 2012).