People
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.
Amani Ahmed
Board of Directors
Amani Ahmed is a 1L JD Candidate at Harvard Law School (Class of 2023) from Princeton, New Jersey. She recently graduated from Duke University with a degree in visual and media studies (Class of 2019) and has experience as a student of the Center for Documentary Studies.
Brittany Barbee
2019–21 Documentary Arts and Media Intern, 2018–19 Emerging Documentary Artist, Documentary Diversity Project
Brittany was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina. She is a lover of all forms of art. The motto she stands by is, “Anything arts is who I am, and anything arts is who I’ll always be.” She is a self- taught musician. At the age of nine, music sparked her interest, specifically percussion.
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.
Michael Betts II
CDS Courses Director
Michael Anthony Betts II (he/him/his) is a native North Carolinian and sound designer who is passionately fascinated by the story of the world around him. His work tends to center on Black and Brown bodies and their existence in white space.
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.
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
Operations Specialist
Jamila R. Davenport is an emerging multimedia documentarian who shares narratives digitally across internet platforms.
Lois Deloatch
Board of Directors
Lois Deloatch has a nearly three-decade-long career in higher education, philanthropy, and the arts. After two decades as a fundraiser for Duke University, Deloatch served as vice chancellor for Institutional Advancement and executive director of the NCCU Foundation at North Carolina Central University.
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.
Alexa Dilworth
Publishing and Awards Director; Senior Editor, CDS Books
Alexa Dilworth (she/her) is publishing director and senior editor at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University, where she also directs the awards program, which includes the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize.
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.
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.
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.
Dorian Gomez
CDS Courses Intern
Dorian Aidee Gomez Pestaña is a Mexican filmmaker and storyteller based in Durham, NC. Her voice and lens are intent on telling stories of inclusion and belonging.
Mara Guevarra
Digital Marketing and Projects Manager
As Digital Marketing and Projects Manager, Mara (they/she) works in social media management and digital content creation as part of the Center for Documentary Studies’ Communications Team. They are particularly interested in using immersive technology in order to document the future and propose new realities.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
Peter Lange
Board of Directors, Chair
Peter Lange joined the Department of Political Science at Duke University in 1981 after a previous teaching position at Harvard University.
Michelle Lanier
Lecturing Fellow, CDS Courses Instructor
An Afro-Carolinian 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.
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
Katelyn Liu
Programming Manager, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Katelyn Liu is the programming manager at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Starting in 2018, Katelyn has been involved with the festival in different ways—as a volunteer, member of the selection committee, programming assistant, and now, in her role as the programming manager.
Xaris A. Martínez
Executive Assistant
Xaris (pronounced HA-ri'z) A. Martínez (ella/she/her/hers) is an executive assistant and project manager at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University.
Quadiriah McCullough
Operations Manager
Quadiriah McCullough (she/her/hers) has been the operations manager at CDS since 2014. She oversees CDS’s physical plant and logistics at the Boiler Room event space and Full Frame Theater at American Tobacco.
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.
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.
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.
Evan Morgan
Photography and Digital Arts Assistant
Evan Morgan is the photography and digital arts assistant at the Center for Documentary Studies. He is a filmmaker and musician and specializes in analog moving-image technology and processes.
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.
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.
Liz Phillips
Communications Director
Elizabeth (Liz) Phillips (she/her/hers) is communications director at the Center for Documentary Studies. This is her second stint at CDS; in 1993, while working as a writer/editor at a government-issue government job in D.C., a friend told her about a new magazine starting up at a place called the Center for Documentary Studies.
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.
Angie Potiny
Development Assistant
Angie Potiny is the Development Assistant for both CDS and Full Frame. She received her degree in Communications and Women’s Studies from UNC-CH.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sadie Tillery
Interim Festival Director; Artistic Director, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Sadie Tillery is the artistic director of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Sadie joined the programming department in 2005 and became director in 2008.
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.
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.
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.
Angie Vorhies
Board of Directors
Angie Vorhies is a poet, documentarian, and co-founder of San Diego Roots, a nonprofit dedicated to educating, empowering, and cultivating sustainable local food communities.
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.
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.