Dr. Jonathan Ray McCollum is assistant professor of music at Anne Arundel Community College and is a senior research fellow with the Armenian Library and Museum of America. He has taught at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the University of Alberta in Canada, the University of Maryland, College Park, and Tufts University. Dr. McCollum holds a PhD (Ethnomusicology) from the University of Maryland, an MA (Ethnomusicology) from Tufts University, and a BA (Music) from Florida State University.

As the former assistant curator of collections at the Armenian Library and Museum of America and as consultant for the Smithsonian Institution, his experiences and interests have spanned several fields such as ethnomusicology, historical musicology, archeomusicology, museum studies, and art history. It is this eclectic array of interests combined with extensive fieldwork trips throughout Japan, China, North America, and Europe, which have led to several academic works on Armenian music, Japanese music, and ethnographic museology. He is the author of numerous articles and conference presentations. His dissertation focused on the music and ritual of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He is the co-author of Armenian Music: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Discography (Scarecrow Press, 2004) and is a contributor to Identity, Pluralism, and Soviet Music (Scarecrow Press, 2004), and Defining Music: An Ethnomusicological and Philisophical Approach (Edwin Mellen Press, 2007), and the chapter on "Music of Central Asia and the Caucasus" in OnMusic World Music Online textbook (2008). 

In addition to his academic activities, he is an active performer, specializing on the trombone, sakbut, world flutes, shakuhachi, and koto.