André de Quadros

André de Quadros, affiliated faculty with the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), is a Professor of Music at Boston University, where he also holds affiliations in African, African American & Black Diaspora, American, Asian, Jewish and Muslim studies, Prison Education, and Forced Migration. An internationally recognized artist, scholar, educator, poet, and human rights activist, de Quadros’s work is distinguished by its deep engagement with communities affected by structural violence, displacement, and social marginalization.

His interdisciplinary scholarship and artistic practice foreground music as a site of resistance, healing, and social transformation. Over the course of his career, de Quadros has worked in more than forty countries across a wide range of contexts, including professional ensembles, public health, prisons, refugee settlements, post-conflict zones, and psychosocial rehabilitation programs. His work has brought him into collaboration with individuals and communities impacted by incarceration, forced migration, sexual violence, and torture. Through these engagements, he has developed innovative approaches to music-making that foreground dignity, agency, and collective voice, often working in settings where artistic expression is constrained or rendered invisible. His research and practice span multiple intersecting fields, including race and mass incarceration, peacebuilding, forced migration, LGBTQ+ studies, and Islamic culture. Central to his work is a commitment to understanding how music operates as a form of testimony, memory, and social imagination, particularly in contexts where histories have been silenced or erased. His scholarship challenges dominant paradigms in music education and ethnomusicology by centering lived experience, ethical engagement, and the political dimensions of cultural production.

In addition to his academic work, de Quadros is an active conductor. He has led choirs and large-scale choral initiatives in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the United States, Israel and the Arab world, and along the Mexico–United States border, frequently working across linguistic, religious, and cultural divides. These projects emphasize dialogue, reconciliation, and the power of collective singing to foster empathy and solidarity. In 2019, de Quadros was named Distinguished Academic Visitor at the University of Cambridge. Among his many honors, he has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne, acknowledging his global impact as a scholar, artist, and advocate for social justice through music.