Biography

Parliamentary service

• Elected to the Senate for New South Wales, 2025.

Parliamentary party positions

• Liberal Party of Australia. Served: 01.07.2025 to present
• Opposition Deputy Whip in the Senate from 8.7.2025.

Personal

• Gender: Female

Qualifications and occupation before entering Federal Parliament

• Bachelor of Arts (Frank Bell Memorial Prize for Anthropology) (University of Sydney).
• First Class Honors (Queensland University of Technology).
• Master of Global Development with Distinction (Griffith University).
• Doctor of Philosophy (Queensland University of Technology).
• Doctoral Student and Casual Lecturer from 2010 to 2013.
• Stay at home mum from 2013 to 2020.
• Research Fellow, Lowy Institute from 2021 to 2025.

Publications

• Jessica Bird, Death and dying in a Karen refugee community: An overlooked challenge in the resettlement process, In 7th Annual Joint University of Liverpool Management School and Keele University IPPM Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences 2012.
• Jessica Bird, Mark Brough & Leonie Cox, Producing solidarity as a settlement strategy: the lived experience of the Karen refugee community in Brisbane, Australia, In 7th Annual Joint University of Liverpool Management School and Keele University IPPM Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences 2012.
• Jessica Nancy Bird, "Talking with lips" : settlement, transnationalism and identity of Karen people from Burma living in Brisbane, Australia (PhD thesis) Queensland University of Technology 2013.
• Jessica Bird, Leonie Cox & Mark Brough, Doing belonging: Meanings of home and settlement among the Karen Community in Brisbane, Australia Journal of Social Inclusion, 7(1), pp. 72-84 2016.
• Jessica Bird, Mark Brough & Leonie Cox, Transnationalism and the Karen wrist-tying ceremony: An ethnographic account of Karen settlement practice in Brisbane The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 27(1), pp. 104-120 2016.
• Jessica Bird, Bound within Borders or Free as a Bird? Karen Life in Refugee Camps on the Thai?Burma Borderlands Journal of Borderlands Studies, 36(4), 675?693 2019.