Jelena Novak works as a principal researcher and assistant professor at CESEM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. Her fields of interests are modern and contemporary music, recent opera, singing and new media, capitalist realism, voice studies and feminine identities in music. Exploring those fields she works as researcher, lecturer, writer, dramaturge, music critic, editor and curator focused on bringing together critical theory and contemporary art. Her most recent books are Postopera: Reinventing the Voice-Body (2015), Operofilia (2018), and Einstein on the Beach: Opera beyond Drama (co-edited with John Richardson, 2019). Recently she collaborated as a dramaturge at the opera in 17 songs Deca (Children, 2022) by Irena Popović at the National Theatre in Belgrade. Currently she works on the book Opera in the Expanded Field and researches about what it means and what it takes to sing beyond human.
Jelena Novak's work was supported by CESEM (Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estetica Musical), NOVA FCSH, UIDB/00693/20203 and LA/P/0132/2020 with the financial support of FCT, I.P. via national funds.