Biography

Dr. Paul David Flood is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A specialist in contemporary European music and politics, his research lies at the intersection of popular music studies, global music history, and queer/trans studies. Dr. Flood’s current book project explores the Eurovision Song Contest’s role in shaping the liberal secular humanist values
that have characterized “European” citizenship since the establishment of the European Union. His writing is published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, Journal of the American Musicological Society, and Scandinavian Studies. He is also co-editing a forthcoming (2027) special issue of Women and
Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture on “Global Queer/Trans Nightlives” alongside Alejandrina M. Medina and Christina Misaki Nikitin. He regularly presents his work at annual meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and the Council for European Studies. He is a recipient of the David Sanjek Paper Prize from IASPM-US (2024), and the Conference
Presentation Prize from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Section of SEM (2025).

Dr. Flood combines rigorous critical thinking with an ethic of care in the classroom, challenging students to collaboratively critique systemic power structures that have shaped historical narratives and contemporary institutions. He was awarded the University of Rochester’s Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student in 2024. As a public musicologist, Dr. Flood has discussed his research on major North American news outlets including NPR and The Globe and Mail, and written for VAN Magazine and I Care If You Listen. He currently serves as Secretary/Treasurer of the AMS Popular Music Study Group and Web Editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies. In Spring 2024, he was a Visiting Scholar at Malmö University in Malmö, Sweden.

Dr. Flood welcomes media requests and prospective student inquiries via email

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Education

• PhD, Musicology – Eastman School of Music (2026)
• MFA, Musicology – University of California, Irvine (2021)
• BA, Music – Westminster Choir College (2019)

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Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• Peer-Reviewed Articles
  • “‘Everybody Wanna Move Like Us!’: Performing Afro-Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 37, no. 3 (2025): 21–42.
• Special issues
  • “Global Queer/Trans Nightlives.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 31 (Forthcoming, 2027). Co-edited with Alejandrina M. Medina and Christina Misaki Nikitin.
• Reviews
  • Living at Night in Times of Pandemic: Night Studies and Club Culture in France and Germany, edited by Anita Jóri and Guillaume Robin, in the Journal of the American Musicological Society 79, no. 1 (2026): 186–189.
  • Gapassipi, by Magnús Pálsson, in Scandinavian Studies 95, no. 1 (2023): 117–120.