Mariana Da Silva Gabriel (She/Her) is a musicology PhD student at the University of California, Davis. Originally from Portugal, Mariana moved to the United Kingdom at the age of six. She received her bachelor’s degree from Cardiff University and her master’s from the University of Oxford. Her research interests are in the interplay between music and politics under authoritarian regimes, and music-making as a societal response to those regimes.

Her undergraduate dissertation(s) focused on music as a means of propaganda in Nazi and Soviet Newsreels during World War II and a unique “three-dimensional” (as a native Portuguese in the diaspora, a female performer, and musicologist) study on Fado and a Portuguese urban folk genre. During her Master’s, she combined her two dissertations and delved into the propagandist use of Fado during the Portuguese dictatorship. Studying under Professor Jason Stanyek, she researched and dissected the Brazilian song Cálice, written under the Brazilian dictatorship, now widely regarded as a protest anthem. Complementing this study, her final thesis focused on the use of Fado as “covert” and “subversive” protest music during the dictatorship.

Mariana is also a regular and keen performer, having sung in many contexts and locations (ranging from the O2 Arena and Royal Albert Hall in London to a choir tour in China). She is also a piano, voice, and music theory teacher and a lover of rescue dogs.