Maria do Rosário Pestana is an ethnomusicologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. Her research focuses on music and migration, folklore and folklorisation processes, the choral singing movement, wind bands, and popular music studies. She has participated in various research projects developed at the Instituto de Etnomusicologia Centro de Estudos em Música e Dança (INET-MD). Recently, she contributed to the The Routledge companion to the Study of Local Musicking edited by Suzel A. Reily and Katherine Brucher (2018), and edited with
Luísa Tiago de Oliveira the book Cantar no Alentejo: a terra, o passado e o presente (2017). She has coordinated an extensive research project on choral singing, and in addition coordinates two ongoing research projects – “Our music, our world: Musical associations, wind bands, and local communities (1880-2018)” and “Sustainable practices: a study of the post-folklorism in Portugal in the 21st century” – both funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).