People

Kelly Alexander

Lecturing Fellow

Bill Bamberger

Lecturing Fellow

Bill Bamberger’s work explores large cultural and social issues of our time: the demise of the American factory, housing in America, adolescents coming of age in an inner-city high school. His book with Cathy N.

Abbas Benmamoun

Board of Directors

Abbas Benmamoun is Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Linguistics and Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement at Duke University, a position responsible for providing intellectual leadership, guidance, and oversight of university-wide strategies and programs to enhance faculty excellence. He oversees faculty development programs, including programs to recruit outstanding and diverse faculty and to partner with schools, departments, and centers to enhance faculty success at Duke and promote a climate that values and celebrates inclusive excellence.

John Biewen

Audio Program Director/Instructor

John Biewen (he/him) is audio program director at CDS and host of the Center’s audio documentary podcast, Scene on Radio. During a thirty-plus-year career as an audio journalist and documentary-maker, he has told stories from forty American states and from Europe, Japan, and India.

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.

Marie T. Cochran

Fall 2020–Spring 2021 Lehman Brady Professor

Born and raised in Toccoa, Georgia, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Marie T. Cochran is an artist, educator and writer. As a self-described cultural pollinator, she uses visual art to convene partnerships that ignite collaboration.

Jamila R. Davenport

Operations Specialist

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

Von Diaz

Board of Directors, Spring 2020 Lehman Brady Professor

Von Diaz is a writer, documentary producer, and author of Coconuts & Collards: Recipes and Stories from Puerto Rico to the Deep South. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she explores food, culture, and identity, and currently teaches food studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Christopher Everett

Communications Manager, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Christopher Everett is the communications manager of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. He is a film director, film producer, social media specialist and graphic artist from Laurinburg, North Carolina. 

Robert Fippinger

Board of Directors

Robert A. Fippinger is a resident of New York City and was a partner and senior counsel in the New York office of the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe until 2015.

Lana Garland

Instructor

Lana Garland has worked as a Creative Director, Director, and Writer/Producer in television and film in the US and Europe. Her work has included content for HBO, BET, and ESPN in America, and TV2 in Denmark.

Jaki Shelton Green

Instructor

Jaki Shelton Green is a writer and poet, a North Carolina native whose publications include Dead on Arrival, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Masks, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, Blue Opal (a play), and Feeding the Light.

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.

Rahi Hasan

CDS Courses Coordinator

Rahi Hasan (they/them) is a formerly undocumented dancer, cultural organizer, educator, impact strategist, and multimedia artist experimenting with ways to challenge power on all fronts to create space for healing and radical imagination.

Bernard L. Herman

Board of Directors

Bernard L. Herman is the George B. Tindall Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, where he also serves on the art history faculty.

Jonathan Jensen

Board of Directors

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.

Shambhavi Kaul

Board of Directors

Shambhavi Kaul is a filmmaker who has exhibited her work worldwide at venues including the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale, The New York Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Edinburgh International

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

Lecturing Fellow

An Afro-Carolinian folklorist, Michelle Lanier has been an instructor at CDS since 2000. Michelle is the first person of color to direct the 25 sites, battlefields, and museums of the N.C. Division of State Historic Sites and Properties. She also served as the founding executive director of North Carolina’s African American Heritage Commission.

Barb Lee

Board of Directors

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

Lisa McCarty

Curator of the Archives of Documentary Arts, Instructor

Lisa McCarty’s work as a photographer, filmmaker, curator, and educator is driven by her interest in the origins of photography. She is particularly interested in how technology influences image production, as well as the material and associative evolution of images.

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.

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

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.

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.

James Peacock

Board of Directors

James L. Peacock is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Comparative Literature, Co-Director of the Duke–UNC Rotary Center for Peace and Conflict, and Chair of World View at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.

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

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

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.

Courtney Reid-Eaton

Exhibitions Director / Creative Director, Documentary Diversity Project

Courtney Reid-Eaton is a culture worker, creative engine, spouse, mother, and Black Feminist. She has been the exhibitions director at CDS since 2001, overseeing the selection, scheduling, curation, design, and installation of exhibits in all of the Center’s galleries and organizing related public programs; she also serves as the creative director of CDS’s pilot Documentary Diversity Project. 

Margaret Sartor

Instructor

Margaret Sartor is a photographer and writer whose past projects include What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney (with co-editor Geoff Dyer) and the best-selling memoir Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing up in the 1970s. 

Michelle Seymour

Business Manager

Michelle Seymour is from Hurdle Mills, North Carolina. Michelle is married and has two children. She has worked at Duke for ten years and has a Bachelor’s degree in business administration. Michelle enjoys traveling, bowling, and watching TV and movies with her family.

Christopher Sims

Director of Undergraduate Education/Lecturing Fellow, 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.

Charlie Thompson

Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies

Charles D. Thompson, Jr. is Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke University. A common thread through his work is a deep concern for people doing their all to have a voice in our agricultural systems.

Kevin A. Tolson

Board of Directors

Kevin A. Tolson works in brand marketing management for Unilever and is a graduate of the New York University Stern School of Business.

Karl von der Heyden

Board of Directors

Karl M. von der Heyden retired from PepsiCo, Inc., in 2001. He had rejoined the company in September 1996 as Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer.

Mike Wiley

Instructor

Email

mike@mikewileyproductions.com

Deborah Willis

Board of Directors; Fall 2000-Spring 2001 Lehman Brady Professor

Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, Africana Studies, where she teaches courses on photography and imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender.