Denise Barata is a professor at the Rio de Janeiro State University and has supervised several master’s and doctoral students about Brazilian black culture, racism, and racial relations. She obtained her doctorate at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) in Semiotics of Music and her master’s degree in Music Education at thw Fluminense Federal University. She won the Young State Scientist Award (2012-2015) and her book “Samba e Partido Alto: Curimbas do Rio de Janeiro” was seleced for the Frankfurt Fair (2014). She was a visiting fellow at the Herb Alpert School of Music, UCLA (2015), with support from Fulbright, and a visiting professor at Eduardo Mondlane University,MZ (2019). She coordinates the African and Diaspora Orality and Memory Laboratory, and also directed concerts of samba in Rio de Janeiro.