People

Photo of Opeyemi Olukemi.

Opeyemi Olukemi

Director

Throughout her career as an interactive producer, funder, and public programmer, Opeyemi has created spaces and pipelines for interdisciplinary artists, communities, and creative teams to experiment and create meaningful innovative content.

Bill Bamberger

Bill Bamberger

Lecturing Fellow

Email

bill.bamberger@duke.edu

Harlan Campbell

Harlan Campbell

Photography and Digital Arts Associate

Harlan Campbell is the photography and digital arts associate at the Center for Documentary Studies. He has a degree in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Tin type photo of Allen Creech

Allen Creech

Systems Administrator

Allen Creech has been a systems administrator for the the past eighteen years, thirteen of them at the Center for Documentary Studies. He also serves in that capacity for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and for Duke's MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program. Originally from Cary, North Carolina, Allen is a graduate of North Carolina State University.

Jamila R. Davenport

Jamila R. Davenport

Operations Specialist

Jamila R. Davenport is an emerging multimedia documentarian who shares narratives digitally across internet platforms.

A photo of Kelsey Favret

Kelsey Favret

Assistant Director of Development

Kelsey Favret (she/her/hers) is the assistant director of development at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS), where she is responsible for the planning, coordination, and implementation of comprehensive annual giving, engagement, and stewardship programs. 

A head shot of Emily Foster

Emily Foster

Associate Interim Festival Director; Marketing Director, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Emily Foster is the Marketing Director at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Before joining Full Frame, she held the position of Communications & Press Manager at Milwaukee Film.

Jaki Shelton Green

Jaki Shelton Green

Instructor

Jaki Shelton Green, ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina, is the first African American and third woman to be named to the post; she was appointed in 2018 and reappointed for a second term in 2021 by Governor Roy Cooper.

A portrait of Michael Gulley

Mike Gulley

Development Director

Mike Gulley is the development director at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS). He has more than eighteen years of experience and expertise in nonprofit fundraising, organizational growth, and relationship management. Mike has helped to grow capacity and fundraise for a number of organizations both here in the Triangle and also during his time living in California’s Bay Area.

Alex Harris

Alex Harris

Professor Emeritus

Alex Harris is a photographer, writer, and teacher. He has photographed for extended periods in Cuba, the Inuit villages of Alaska, the Hispanic villages of northern New Mexico, and across the American South. He taught at Duke for almost forty years through the Sanford School, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts Program until his retirement (professor emeritus) in summer 2019.

Gary Hawkins

Gary Hawkins

Lecturing Fellow

Gary Hawkins is a writer and filmmaker whose work traverses many genres, fiction and nonfiction, experimental and traditional, finding its expression in a variety of forms – essay, prose, installation and cinema.

Wesley Hogan

Wesley Hogan

Instructor

Wesley Hogan is an undergraduate instructor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and teaches the history of youth social movements, African American history, women’s history and oral history.

Katie Hyde

Katie Hyde

Lecturing Fellow

Katie Hyde is the director of Literacy Through Photography (LTP), a program based at the Center for Documentary Studies. In this capacity, she works closely with undergraduate students, community volunteers, and teachers and students in the Durham Public Schools.

Jonathan Jensen

Jonathan Jensen

Board of Directors, Co-Chair

Jonathan Jensen has been a serial entrepreneur in media, real estate, and energy, and is currently trading commodities and managing an asset portfolio while taking time off to raise his two young sons with his wife, Amy.

Nancy Kalow

Nancy Kalow

Lecturing Fellow

Email

nkalow@duke.edu

Caitlin Margaret Kelly

Caitlin Margaret Kelly

Director, Power Plant Gallery

Caitlin Margaret Kelly is an artist, runner, and devout coffee drinker. She is Director of the Power Plant Gallery at Duke University.

EB Landesberg

EB Landesberg

Program Director, Hine Fellows

Elizabeth (EB) Landesberg is a filmmaker, multimedia artist and educator. In addition to co-directing the Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows Program, she is a producer and facilitator for Another Kind of Girl Collective, an expanding global media collective for young women living in displaced communities.

Michelle Lanier

Michelle Lanier

Lecturing Fellow, CDS Courses Instructor

An AfroCarolina folklorist, Michelle Lanier has been an instructor at CDS since 2000. Michelle is the first person of color to direct the twenty-five sites, battlefields, and museums of the NC Division of State Historic Sites and Properties. She also served as the founding executive director of North Carolina’s African American Heritage Commission.

A photo of Barb Lee

Barb Lee

Board of Directors, Co-Chair

Barb Lee is the founder and President of both Point Made Films, a documentary film company that focuses on American identity, and Point Made Learning, a consulting company that, using the stories of Point Made

S. Charmaine McKissick-Melton

S. Charmaine McKissick-Melton

Board of Directors

S. Charmaine McKissick-Melton is associate professor and former interim chair in the Department of Mass Communication at North Carolina Central University, and a 2017–18 NCCU-Duke Digital Humanities Fellow.

A photo of Lynn McKnight

Lynn McKnight

Strategic Advisor

After a career in journalism, Lynn McKnight returned to her Duke alma mater in 1998 to join the CDS team building a dynamic place devoted to the documentary arts.
First serving as communications director, over the years she added external relations, program planning and management, and development to her duties. She has degrees from Duke University (public policy) and the University of Mississippi (southern studies) and has completed graduate studies in communications at the University of Florida.

A head shot of Leesa Moore

Leesa Moore

Development Manager, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Leesa Moore joins our Full Frame family as our new Development Manager. Leesa was born and raised in Durham, and majored in Film and Media Communications at North Carolina State University.

Julie Morris

Julie Morris

Board of Directors

Julie Morris is a longtime leader and advocate for the arts nationwide. Splitting her time between Raleigh and Los Angeles, she became involved with CDS and Full Frame in 2015 and is currently a member of the Full Frame Advisory Board.

John Moses

John Moses

Instructor

Email

moses001@mc.duke.edu

A photo of Stephanie Owens

Stephanie Owens

DocX Director

Stephanie Owens' background stretches from creator to curation. Her experience as a filmmaker, photographer, and film festival programmer has equipped her with insight into various forms of storytelling and the multifaceted needs of filmmakers and artists.

Dan Partridge

Dan Partridge

Production Co-Director, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Dan Partridge is the production co-director for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. He has served as the research associate for the Jazz Loft Project at the Center for Documentary Studies, beginning in 2003. From 2000–2002, he was the CDS exhibitions and public programs assistant.

Susie Post-Rust

Susie Post-Rust

Lecturing Fellow

Post-Rust has taught at Duke since 2006. Her courses enable Duke Students to engage with the community outside university. She works to impart the experience of producing in-depth visual storytelling to her students. Most of her courses are service learning and involve a component of giving back to the community.

Karen Price

Karen Price

Instructor

In addition to teaching, Price directs the Duke in Los Angeles undergraduate semester away program. She received an MFA in production from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, an MA in creative writing and English from Hollins University, and an AB in English and political science from Duke.

Tom Rankin

Tom Rankin

Professor of the Practice/Director, MFAEDA

Tom Rankin is Professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University where he directs the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts. For 15 years he was director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. Rankin is formerly Associate Professor of Art and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi and Chair of the Art Department at Delta State University.

Benjamin D. Reese, Jr.

Benjamin D. Reese Jr.

Board of Directors

Benjamin D. Reese Jr. is President of BENREESE, LLC. , a global diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm.

Chris Sims

Christopher Sims

Undergraduate Education Director/Associate Professor of the Practice, Fall 2017 Lehman Brady Fellow

Christopher Sims is the Undergraduate Educator Director at the Center for Documentary Studies and a Lecturing Fellow in Documentary Arts. He has worked as a photo archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and, at CDS, has coordinated the exhibition, awards, and web programs.

Photo of Shameeka

Shameeka Thomas

Night Manager

Shameeka Thomas is a night manager (front desk attendant) and event manager at the Center for Documentary Studies.  She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with a Master of Business Administration degree in 2013.  She also has a Bachelor of Science degree with an emphasis in IT.

Tim Tyson

Tim Tyson

Senior Research Scholar

Timothy B. Tyson is senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina. 

A photo of David Wong

David Wong

Accounting Specialist

David is responsible for various accounting functions at CDS: paying vendors, paying employees, booking credit card receipts, depositing checks, and the like. He is a grad- uate of the University of Virginia with a degree in music, and by meanderings came to administrative work.