João Pedro Cachopo is Assistant Professor at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities of NOVA University Lisbon. He is an integrated member of CESEM (Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music), where he coordinates the Critical Theory and Communication Research Group, and a collaborator at IFILNOVA. His research focuses on the intersection of aesthetics, politics and technology, the relations between the arts, and questions of critique, essayism, performance, intermediality, and dramaturgy.
His most recent book is O Escândalo da Distância: Uma leitura d’A Montanha Mágica para o Século XXI (Tinta da China, 2025. He is also the author of Callas and Her Doubles: Metamorphoses of Aura in the Digital Age (Bloomsbury, 2026), originally published in Portuguese as Callas e os Seus Duplos: Metamorfoses da Aura da Era Digital (Sistema Solar, 2023), and of The Digital Pandemic: Imagination in Times of Isolation (Bloomsbury, 2022), originally published as A Torção dos Sentidos: Pandemia e Remediação Digital in Portugal (Documenta, 2020) and in Brazil (Elefante, 2021). The book version of his PhD dissertation on Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetics, Verdade e Enigma: Ensaio sobre o pensamento estético de Adorno (Vendaval 2013), received the Portuguese PEN Club Award in the First Work category in 2014. He edited A Música das Artes (Documenta, 2026) and co-edited Rancière and Music (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Estética e Política entre as Artes (Edições 70, 2017), and Pensamento Crítico Contemporâneo (Edições 70, 2014). His work has appeared in journals such as Opera Quarterly, New German Critique, and Sound Stage Screen, as well as in collective volumes, such as The Routledge Companion of Music and Modern Literature. He has translated works by Georges Didi-Huberman, Jacques Rancière, and Theodor W. Adorno into Portuguese.
From 2017 to 2019 he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Chicago. He has been a visiting professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (2016, 2024), the University of Campinas (2016), and the University of Brasília (2022), and a visiting researcher at the University of Potsdam (2008), Paris 8 University (2009), Humboldt University of Berlin (2010), Durham University (2012), and Columbia University in the City of New York (2015). He has presented his work in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the UK and the USA.