Dr Jacob Mallinson Bird
Dr Jacob Mallinson Bird
Research interests
Voice studies, noise music, queer theory, drag performance
Departmental Lecturer
Lecturer in Music, St. Hugh's, Exeter, and The Queen's Colleges
Dr Jacob Mallinson Bird is a musicologist, dramaturg, and performer whose research explores the intersections of sound and identity, with particular interests in queer performance, the voice, and popular music. He is currently Departmental Lecturer in Music at the University of Oxford and an Affiliated Lecturer in Music at the University of Cambridge. His work combines ethnographic research, performance studies, queer theory, and critical approaches to sound and listening to examine how musical practices articulate identities, bodies, and communities.
Jacob's doctoral research examined drag lip-sync performance, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with five London-based drag performers to explore the relationships between voice, embodiment, technology, and identity. This research will be published in a forthcoming monograph, Becoming Queen: Voice and Identity in Drag Lip-Sync Performance, under contract with Bloomsbury Academic. His current research explores the intersections of queer theory and noise theory, with a particular focus on contemporary noise music scenes in the United States.
Alongside his academic research, Jacob works internationally as an operatic dramaturg and researcher, bringing his academic interests into dialogue with contemporary opera production. Credits include: Dustin Wills's one-person adaptation of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at Little Island, New York, in 2024; and Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber’s 2026 production of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha with Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier.
Beyond academia, Jacob is a pianist and drag performer, performing under the name Dinah Lux. His practice encompasses music, fashion, and performance, with appearances at Classical Pride, Wilton's Music Hall, the Festival d'Hyères, and Paris Fashion Week. His work has been featured in publications including Vogue, Dazed, i-D, and GQ. Jacob also contributes to wider public conversations about music, queer culture, and performance through invited talks and appearances at institutions and events including the BBC Proms, Sotheby's, Brandeis University, and the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Publications
Monograph
Bird, Jacob Mallinson. Forthcoming. Becoming Queen: Voice and Identity in Drag Lip-Sync Performance. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Journal articles
Bird, Jacob Mallinson. 2022. ‘Drag Lip-Sync Performance as Otobiography: Finding a Voice Through the Voice of an Other’. Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music 6 (1): 8–16.
Bird, Jacob Mallinson. 2020. ‘The Cyborg Queen: Lip-Syncing and Posthumanism in ShayShay’s “Mutual Core”’. Contemporary Music Review 39 (5): 526–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2020.1852799
Bird, Jacob Mallinson. 2020. ‘Haptic Aurality: On Touching the Voice in Drag Lip-Sync Performance’. Sound Studies 6 (1): 45–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2019.1640512
Book chapter
Bird, Jacob Mallinson. 2026. ‘Ghostly Voices: Lip-Syncing, Memory, and AIDS in Dickie Beau’s Re-Member Me’. In The Routledge Companion to Voice and Identity, edited by Amy Skjerseth, Freya Jarman, and Naomi André. London: Routledge.
Reviews
Bird, Jacob Mallinson. 2023. ‘A Politics of Listening’ [review of Rajni Shah, Experiments in Listening, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021]. Performance Research 28 (3): 122–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2023.2275473
Bird, Jacob Mallinson. 2020. Review of Merrie Snell, Lipsynching (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). Popular Music 39 (3–4). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143020000641