Meet the core team of the National Jazz Archive. All are available to assist you in your jazz research.
As part-time staff of the Archive, they manage the day-to-day work of the Archive and its volunteers. The full-team, including our volunteers and Trustees, enjoy meeting regularly at the Archive in Loughton, Essex.
They are available to help any visitors to the Archive, or to assist with queries received by email or phone. Please contact them if you have a query, or are interested in discovering more about jazz and the work of the Archive.
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Thanks to the continuing generosity of Essex County Council, Lily Ashley, was appointed as the National Jazz Archive’s new Jazz Collections Associate in 2025. Based at our Loughton headquarters, Lily holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Durham University where she researched jazz literature around Avant Garde jazz for her dissertation. She then went on to complete a Master’s Degree from Kings College London in Contemporary Literature and Cultural Theory. She is a musician, playing the saxophone and clarinet, and is a regular at local jazz concerts. Lily is our front-of-house face at the National Jazz Archive and works alongside other members of the Essex Library team. As well as providing research direction, her focus is to develop our process and systems and ensure our collections are accessible and maintained to professional standards. |
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Dr Pedro Cravinho is the National Jazz Archive’s Operations Director (West Midlands). Pedro is the Keeper of Archives at the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media and a Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (Birmingham City University), where he co-leads the BCMCR Jazz Research Cluster. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Jazz Archive, a member of the editorial board of the jazz research journal, Jazz-hitz (Musikene, Spain) and the Scottish Jazz Archive. He’s also a board member of the Duke Ellington Society UK, and co-founder and Vice-President of the Portuguese Jazz Network. Dr Cravinho is a SEDA Accredited Research Supervisor and welcomes PhD students interested in exploring topics related to Jazz, Media, and Archives, and teaches in the Jazz Department at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (UK). He began his musical career as a self-taught electric bassist taking part in Porto’s late 1980s pop-rock scene and later got a music education on classical double bass before starting a career as a freelance bassist and educator. He became a full-time researcher after a degree in Musicology (BMus) and a PhD in Ethnomusicology/Jazz Studies at the University of Aveiro (Portugal). Pedro has worked at the Escola de Jazz do Porto and the Escola Profissional de Jazz do Porto, among other music schools in North Portugal. He founded JAM – Jazz Ao Minho, collective jazz focused on improvised music in Braga. He was the Head of Jazz Department at ArtEduca – Conservatório Regional de Vila Nova de Famalicão. As a researcher, Pedro belonged to the Centro de Estudos de Jazz (Jazz Studies Centre) at the University of Aveiro, working on José Duarte’s Collection and lecturing History of Jazz – Jazz in Portugal course (MA Jazz Students). As a full-time researcher, he took part in the first-ever jazz research project in Portugal – “Jazz Messengers: The reception of Jazz and its promoters in Twenty-Century Portugal”, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Pedro has lectured at the Conservatório de Música de Coimbra (Research Methods and History of Jazz), where he was also the Jazz Scientific Coordinator (PAP) of the Curso Profissional de Instrumentistas de Música de Jazz before moving to the UK, where he became a Doctoral Visiting Researcher in the Music Department at the University of York, before joining Birmingham City University. You can also read more about the National Jazz Archive’s partnership with Birmingham City University. |
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Angela provides operational management for the National Jazz Archive and has worked with us since 2008 having been project manager for both of our National Lottery Heritage Fund projects. This included successfully delivering The Story of British Jazz and The Intergenerational Jazz Reminiscence projects. She runs all our volunteer projects in Loughton, working closely with our volunteers and Trustees to deliver the aims of the Archive. With a background in archives and records management, Angela became involved in large-scale fine-art digitisation projects, specialising in the creation and management of metadata – this was through the development of image cataloguing databases, controlled vocabulary, and key-wording infrastructures. Since 2001 she has also held the position of Director of Content at Heritage Image Partnership Ltd, representing the collections of prestigious heritage institutions through the Heritage Images online historical image library. Some of our National Jazz Archive collections are now available for commercial licensing and print-on-demand products through Heritage Images. |
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Thomas Kuglin is the Archive's IT specialist based at Loughton. He provides many facets of ongoing technical support and has been working as part of our core team since 2011. His work encompasses a range of tasks and activities from compiling reports and designing promotional materials to maintaining our computers and networks. This has included development of our exhibitions for Say it with Music in 2017 and Women in Jazz in 2018 and included the design of a unique listening-post app. Having studied music at university and earned a master's degree in acoustic composition, Thomas has long had an affinity for computers. One of his hobbies is photography, which also makes him well placed to appreciate and help digitise the wonderful photographs that form an increasingly significant part of the National Jazz Archive's collections. |
Lily Ashley
Pedro Cravinho
Angela Davies
Thomas Kuglin