Emma Lile

Having graduated in Music and Sport and Recreation Studies from the University of Birmingham, followed by an MPhil in pre-industrial athletic competition in Wales, Emma Lile was awarded her MA in Welsh Ethnological Studies at Cardiff University, and completed her PhD on Welsh rural sports at the University of South Wales. She was curator of traditional music, sports and customs at St Fagans National History Museum between 1996 and 2014 and is currently secretary of the University of Wales Alumni Association: Ethnology and Folk Studies Section. Author of books and monographs on various aspects of Welsh social and cultural life, Lile wrote the Wales entries for the Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports (2005), the first reference work for a century on the subject, and was editorial consultant for the folk dance-related material in the The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales (2008), for which she also prepared entries on sports and customs.