Dr Pedro Cravinho (above right) 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), co-leading the BCMCR Jazz Research Cluster. His research interests broadly include the jazz diaspora’s social, political, and cultural history and distinct media representation in the public sphere.

In mid-2015, he began conducting original research about jazz in Birmingham (UK), while continuing his ongoing research about jazz in Portugal (2011-present). Since 2018, has been working with freelancer photographer Brian Homer on a collaborative research project, “Everyday Jazz Life: A photographic project on contemporary jazz musicians’ lives in Birmingham”.

As an author and editor advisor, he has collaborated in several international publications, such as Jazz and Totalitarianism (2017, Routledge), The History of European Jazz: The Music, Musicians and Audience in Context (2018, Equinox), The Oxford History of Jazz in Europe (in print, Oxford), and after a first bilingual monograph (Portuguese – English) dedicated to the jazz scene in Coimbra during the New State regime (2016, JACC), he published his second monograph, Encountering Jazz and Television in Cold War Era Portugal: 1954-1974 (2022, Routledge) and a key text about the ‘Birth of Porto’s Jazz Scene‘ during the New State regime (2022, Popular Music and Society).

He is a member of the editorial board of the jazz research journal, Jazz-hitz (Musikene, Spain), and a Trustee for the National Jazz Archive, Archives West Midlands and the Scottish Jazz Archive, 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).

Past

Cravinho began his musical career as a self-taught electric bassist taking part in Porto’s late 1980s pop-rock scene. Later he got a music education on classical (double bass) with Altino Carvalho e Florian Pertzborn and jazz (double bass and electric bass) with Alberto Jorge, Pedro Barreiros and José Soares 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).

As an educator, Cravinho 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. Cravinho was the Head of Jazz Department at ArtEduca – Conservatório Regional de Vila Nova de Famalicão.

As a researcher, Cravinho 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). In the same institution, as a full-time researcher, Cravinho 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.

As a lecturer, Cravinho worked 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.