The fourth Glarean Award for musical research will be presented by the Swiss Musicological Society (SMS) in Bern on 5 December 2013. This year, the award goes to Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, director and professor at the department of ethnomusicology at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa.
She acted as president of the Portuguese Musicology Society (1992-2006) and vice president of the International Council for Traditional Music (UNESCO) between 1997 and 2001, and again since 2009. Her academic research and numerous papers have focussed mainly on the music traditions of Portugal and the Middle East. Her current research projects are dedicated to Portuguese jazz and Celtic influence on the music of Galicia and north Portugal. The four-volume Enciclopédia da Másica em Portugal no Século XX (2010), Music and Conflict (2010) and Traditional Arts in Southern Arabia: Music and Society Sohar, Sultante of Oman (2009) figure prominently among her most recent works.
The Glarean Award, endowed with 10’000 francs, has been awarded every two years since 2007 to researchers having distinguished themselves through exceptional historiographical contributions and a due consideration of questions concerning music publication and distribution.