Manuel Pedro Ferreira was educated at Lisbon and Princeton University, where he wrote his PhD dissertation under Kenneth Levy on Gregorian chant at Cluny. He teaches at the Music Sciences Department of the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH/NOVA), which he sometime coordinated. Since 2005 he also chairs the Research Centre on the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music (CESEM) at FCSH/NOVA. In 1995 he founded the early music ensemble Vozes Alfonsinas, which he still directs in concerts and recordings. He was elected in 2010 a member of the Academia Europaea and is since 2012 member of the Directive Board of the International Musicological Society.
Dedicated mainly to musicological studies, Manuel Pedro Ferreira published a vast number of papers in books and journals worldwide. He received the Music Essay Award from the Portuguese Music Council for his book O Som de Martin Codax / The Sound of Martim Codax (Lisboa, 1986) and was responsible for the facsimile edition of both the 16th-century Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Publia Hortensia de Elvas (Lisboa, 1989) and the 15th-century Porto 714 MS (Porto, 2001). He also published Cantus Coronatus — Seven cantigas d’amor by King Dinis (Kassel, 2005); Antologia de Música em Portugal na Idade Média e no Renascimento, 2 vols., 2 CDs (Lisboa, 2008); Aspectos da Música Medieval no Ocidente Peninsular, 2 vols. (Lisboa, 2009-2010); and Revisiting the Music of Medieval France: from Gallican chant to Dufay (Farnham-Burlington, 2012). He edited a double issue of the Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia (2004-2005) and the following books: Dez compositores portugueses. Percursos da escrita musical no século XX (Lisboa, 2007); Medieval Sacred Chant: from Japan to Portugal (Lisboa, 2008); A Sé de Braga. Arte, Liturgia e Música, do final do século XI à época tridentina (with Ana Maria Rodrigues; Lisboa, 2009); ‘New Music’, 1400-1600: Papers from an International Colloquium on the Theory, Authorship and Transmission of Music in the Age of the Renaissance (with João Pedro d’Alvarenga; Lisboa-Évora, 2009); Harmonias do Céu e da Terra: A música nos manuscritos de Guimarães (séculos XII-XVII) (Lisboa-Guimarães, 2012); Do canto à escrita: novas questões em torno da lírica galego-portuguesa (with Graça Videira Lopes; Lisboa, 2016); Musical Exchanges, 1100-1650: Iberian connections (Kassel, 2016). He has been additionally active as a music critic, a composer and a poet. He is married and father of three.