Nicole Steinberg received her Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She teaches as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Towson University.  An interdisciplinary scholar, her work bridges opera, trauma, and performance studies within the broader discourses of music and Holocaust commemoration. She recently published her research on Holocaust opera and the institutional framing of memory in the Opera Journal, and has additional work forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Music, Sound and Trauma and ReSounding Loss: Music, Grief, and Culture. Steinberg has presented her scholarship at conferences of the American Musicological Society, the Society on Music Since 1900, the International Network of Genocide Scholars, the National WWII Museum, the European Studies Conference, the Society for Ethnomusicology. Steinberg is also a sought-after public lecturer in the DMV area, having given talks for Annapolis Opera, Opera Baltimore, Wolf Trap Opera among others. 

Steinberg’s dissertation research examined Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s 1968 Holocaust opera The Passenger within trauma studies, moral responsibility and memorialization frameworks. She was awarded the Mary Savage Snouffer Dissertation Fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year by the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities.

In addition to her teaching, Steinberg currently serves as the Cultural Programs Coordinator and project lead of Voices in Solidarity: Baltimore’s Black and Jewish Operatic History, in partnership with Opera Baltimore, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, and the Jewish Museum of Maryland, generously supported by a grant from the Maryland Heritage Area Authority. Jonestown’s transformation from a Jewish immigrant hub to a predominantly Black neighborhood reflects Baltimore’s history of migration, displacement, and resilience, with both communities continuously facing discrimination while shaping the city’s cultural and artistic landscape. Voices in Solidarity aims to use this historically rich setting to bridge divides through music, learning, and conversation, making Jonestown an essential backdrop for place-based storytelling and reconciliation. Between 2018-2023, she also served as Director of Operations and Media at Opera Baltimore, where she managed the company’s finances, data analysis, patron relations, marketing, and social media development. During her five-year tenure, she helped the company grow from a small budget non-profit to a million-dollar budget arts organization.

Prior to her musicological research and administrative work, Nicole had come from a performance background, receiving a Master of Music in Voice Performance from Towson University in 2018 and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Miami in 2016. She spent the early portion of her career performing serving as a cantorial soloist and performing various soprano roles with institutions and festivals including the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival (2018), New York Lyric Opera Theatre (2016), and Miami Summer Music Festival (2015) among others.