Associate Professor in Slavic Languages & Literatures, received a 2014–15 research leave fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. He received conference support grants from UChicago's Council on International Studies, the Committee for Central Eurasian Studies, and the Center for International Studies for the 2016 Conference in Central Eurasian Studies. Bird also received a grant from the UChicago Center in Beijing to support a Russian-Chinese intellectual history conference in collaboration with Clemson University.