ELSA DE LUCA is an Assistant Professor of Early Music at NOVA University Lisbon and is deeply involved in the development of tools for computer-assisted research in early music, particularly databases and the automatic encoding of plainchant. She leads the interdisciplinary research project Echoes from the Past: Unveiling a Lost Soundscape with Digital Analysis (2022.01957.PTDC). Echoes was awarded €249,506.19 in funding and it was ranked first in the 2022 Portuguese national call for research projects in the 'Arts' category. 

Elsa has published extensively on musical notation, cryptography, and liturgy in Iberian and French manuscripts in Early Music History, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, MusikTheorie, Revue de Musicologie, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, Portuguese Journal of Musicology, among others. She has co-edited two special issues—one for Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (Digital Musicology, in progress) and another for the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (Connecting the Dots: New Research Paradigms for Iberian Manuscripts as Material Objects). She has also co-edited the Proceedings of the Music Encoding Conference, Tufts University 26-29 May 2020, the Digital Libraries for Musicology 2025 Proceedings, as well as two volumes entitled The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the West (2023) and The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the East (2025). She is Executive Secretary of the Centre for Music Studies (CESEM) at NOVA University Lisbon, coordinates the Portuguese Early Music Database, co-directs the book series Musicalia Antiquitatis & Medii Aevi (Brepols), and serves as Treasurer of the Portuguese Society for Research in Music (SPIM). In 2023 she was invited to join the CESEM-FCSH editorial committee and the review editors for the Portuguese Journal of Musicology new series. Over the years, Elsa has collaborated in ten research projects in Italy, France, Portugal, the UK and Canada. 

Main areas of teaching

Music paleography and codicology

Music encoding (early music)

Music history and analysis (medieval and renaissance music)

Historical performance practice

Keywords

Neumatic music scripts

Liturgical chant

Transmission of early medieval chant

Text-music interactions in chant

Digital Humanities applied to musicological research

Iberian Peninsula

Teaching

Elsa welcomes new research students with a broad interest in early music.

IDs

ORCID ID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8020-2697  

Scopus Author ID 56950314800                                                                              

Google Scholar ID z4swOJQAAAAJ&hl

CIÊNCIA ID 051E-2F38-CA4C

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Elsa De Luca

Professora Auxiliar em música antiga (CESEM - FCSH Universidade Nova de Lisboa)  

ELSA DE LUCA é Professora Auxiliar de Música Antiga na Universidade NOVA de Lisboa e está ativamente envolvida no desenvolvimento de ferramentas para a investigação assistida por computador em música antiga, em particular bases de dados e a codificação automática do cantochão. Lidera o projecto de investigação interdisciplinar Echoes from the Past: Unveiling a Lost Soundscape with Digital Analysis (2022.01957.PTDC) e publicou extensivamente sobre notação musical, criptografia e liturgia em manuscritos ibéricos e franceses.

De Luca foi co-editora de dois números temáticos — um da revista Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (TISMIR, em curso) e outro do Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies. Co-editou igualmente as actas da Music Encoding Conference 2020 e da Digital Libraries for Musicology 2025, bem como dois volumes intitulados The Materiality of Chants in the West (2023) e The Materiality of Chants in the East (2025).

É Secretária Executiva do Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical (CESEM) da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, coordena a Portuguese Early Music Database, co-dirige a colecção Musicalia Antiquitatis & Medii Aevi (Brepols) e exerce funções de Tesoureira da Sociedade Portuguesa para a Investigação em Música (SPIM). Em 2023, foi convidada a integrar a comissão editorial do CESEM-FCSH e a equipa de editores de recensões da nova série da Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia. Ao longo dos anos, colaborou em dez projectos de investigação em Itália, França, Portugal, Reino Unido e Canadá.

 PHOTO CREDIT 

The lovely images you see on this website come from the early tenth century 'León Antiphoner' (E-L MS 8) available here