Assistant Professor Hulsey Center 231
(205) 934-7376
Research and Teaching Interests: Embodiment, Vocality, Cognition, Popular music studies, 20th century German music history, Critical voice studies, Trauma, Sound studies, Music history pedagogy, Historiography, Neuroscience and music, Music and conflict, Migration studies, Economic anthropology
Office Hours: By appointment
Education:
- PhD in Musicology (Ethnomusicology emphasis), Florida State University
- Doctor of Music in Voice Performance, Florida State University
- Master of Music and Performer’s Certificate in Voice, The Eastman School of Music
- Bachelor of Arts in German, Birmingham-Southern College
A native of Birmingham, Margaret Jackson is an active singer, ethnomusicologist, clinician, and administrator. Her research interests lie in embodiment and cognition, with an emphasis on emotional processing and communication as well as the role of artistic creation in neuromodulation.
Dr. Jackson is a former American Fellow of the American Association of University Women and Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where she completed additional studies in German literature. As a Deutsch Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) visiting scholar to the University of Cologne, Germany, her early fieldwork focused on the musical expression of social precarity in post-migrant communities of the northern Rhine region. She has served as a member of the musicology faculty at Florida State University, where she was a Louise Shelfer scholar, the director of the University’s Experience Germany! study abroad institute, a member of the Liberal Studies Board, and the recipient of the first-year professor research award, and Troy University, where she was the Coordinator of Music History and a member of the voice faculty. She has also supported the German Academic Exchange Service as a Research Scholar.
Jackson’s stage experience includes performances with operatic, symphonic, and chamber ensembles throughout western Europe, South America, and the United States. Past concert and oratorio solo engagements have included Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem and C Minor Mass, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Brückner’s F Minor Mass, Saint-Säens’ Weihnachtsoratorium, Brahms’ Requiem, Britten’s War Requiem, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Soma’s Gloria a Díos - Trés Canciones, and Nelson’s Das Lied eines Liebenden. Her broad performing background in opera and musical theater includes performances with the Folkwang Theater, the Pforzheim Stadttheater, the Rome Festival, Stella AG, Opera Theatre of Rochester, Eastman Opera Theater, Summerfest, and Florida State Opera, among others. A sought-after recitalist and interpreter of new music, Dr. Jackson has more than fifty world and U.S. premieres to her credit. She has most recently released two recordings through Centaur Records, including Alban Berg: Jugendieder (2020) and The Songs of Ignatz Waghalter (2024).
Dr. Jackson’s work has been published in Musicians and Composers of the Twentieth Century, The Forties in America, The Thirties in America, and Great African-Americans of the Twentieth Century, all with Salem Press, and the National Association of Teachers of Singing Journal of Singing. She has presented at annual meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, the American Folklore Society, the German Studies Association, the London Institute of Contemporary Music Performance, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and the College Music Society.
Student success and access to cross-cultural engagement opportunities are at the heart of Dr. Jackson’s educational mission, evidenced by study abroad programs she has created at Troy and Florida State Universities. The latter yielded Experience, Germany!, a long-standing collaboration between FSU and the Technical University in Dresden that has provided culturally-immersive study opportunities for hundreds of students. While initially focused on art, history, and musical professionalism, the curriculum expanded to encompass ethics and social responsibility and to focus on interactions between State-sponsored arts programs and refugees arriving from war-torn areas of the Middle East and northern Africa. She has piloted numerous graduate courses in vocality, corporeality, and cognition and has also taught introductory courses in ethnomusicology, popular music, and music cultures of the world. Her students have been awarded with fellowships from the Fulbright, Chateaubriand, and Boren Foundations and have been accepted into leading conservatories such as the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the New England Conservatory, the Eastman School of Music, and the music conservatories of Dresden, Cologne, and Munich, among others.