Helena Rodrigues

Helena Rodrigues is an Associate Professor with Aggregation at Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and the founder of the Laboratory for Music and Communication in Childhood of the research unit CESEM at the same institution. She has promoted multiple innovative initiatives, as diverse as the Bebé Babá Project and the annual International Colloquium Arts for Childhood and Human and Social Development. Author of several publications, she introduced in Portugal the ideas behind Edwin Gordon’s theory of musical learning.

Colwyn Trevarthen has also strongly influenced her work. She has been practicing voice and body, searching for organic and primary ways to communicate. Aiming to improve artistic practices for infancy, she has been developing innovative approaches to training that she defines as “opening the gates on communicative musicality.”

She was a Research Fellow of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. She has received several prizes, namely the American Club Award and a Santander prize for academic excellence. She is the artistic director of Companhia de Música Teatral, a group that specializes in creating artistic and educative projects with music at the root of interdisciplinary practice. She coordinated Opus Tutti, a project that aimed to create and implement good practices in the community for infancy and early childhood, and the GermInArte Project, whose primary goal is to design and experiment with musical and artistic training for the early years. She is often invited to lecture and give workshops worldwide on early childhood education, music development, music learning theory, music as a tool for social and human development, and arts for infancy.