Maureen Loughran joined Smithsonian Folkways Recordings as Director and Curator in 2023. A public ethnomusicologist by training, Loughran was the senior producer for the nationally broadcast public radio program American Routes in New Orleans. She wrote and edited radio segments on vernacular American cultural topics and artist interviews with a wide variety of important figures of American music, as well as producing long-feature documentaries on Woody Guthrie, Bessie Smith and John Coltrane, among others. She also served as deputy director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York, where she oversaw grants, managed artist relations and produced public programs. Loughran’s experience includes work in archives, both internationally at the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, Ireland, and nationally at the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress. As a researcher, Loughran documented the sacred and secular music traditions of Baton Rouge, Louisiana for the Louisiana Folklife Program, while her doctoral research explored underground radio, soundscape gentrification and cultural community organizing in her hometown of Washington, D.C. Loughran holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Brown University.