David R. M. Irving studied at Griffith University, the University of Queensland, and the University of Cambridge. He held post-doctoral positions at Christ's College, Cambridge, and King's College London, then taught at the University of Nottingham, the Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne. Since 2019 he has been an ICREA Research Professor at the Institució Milà i Fontanals de Recerca en Humanitats-CSIC. His research interests include the role of music in early modern intercultural contact, the global history of music, and historical performance practice. He is co-editor of the journal Eighteenth-Century Music (Cambridge University Press) and co-general editor of the forthcoming Cultural History of Western Music (Bloomsbury, 2023). His awards include the Jerome Roche Prize (Royal Musical Association) and the McCredie Musicological Award (Australian Academy of the Humanities). 

Research interests

My research stands at the nexus of historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and global history, examining the role of music in intercultural contact during the early modern period. I have worked on musical and cultural repercussions of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and British colonialism in early modern Southeast Asia, and the role of music in various Catholic missions in the early modern world. I aim to develop new conceptual frameworks for global histories of music, and to explore the impact of colonialism on musical thought and practice in early modern Europe. I am working on two monographs, Transitory Sounds: Performing Praxis of Global Music History (under contract to University of Michigan Press) and How the World Made European Music: Sonic Identities in Global Early Modernity (under contract to Oxford University Press). I also serve as Chair of the International Musicological Society’s Study Group “Global History of Music”.