Theme: Centers and Edges

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

The Carolina Theatre
309 W Morgan St
Durham, North Carolina, 27701
United States

Allison Matthews

Originally from Dallas, Texas, Dr. Allison Mathews the daughter of Sherbie and Vicki Mathews, both of whom are innovative community leaders who taught Allison how to lead by following. She is the founder of the 2BeatHIV project, which is a UNC Chapel Hill-based research project examining how crowdsourcing contests can be an effective community engagement tool that empowers local and global communities to shape the future of HIV cure research. The project hosts a series of crowdsourcing contests that encourage community members to use art, technology, and music to develop creative solutions to the ethical challenges of HIV cure research (see 2BeatHIV.org for more info). 2BeatHIV has also received local and national media attention, including interviews with Viola Davis, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Bun B from UGK, Shirley Ceasar, David and Tamela Mann, Johnny Gill, and a host of Radio One Raleigh radio personalities.

Ana Mitchell

Member of Corn and the Colonels, Cajon, Percussion. Corn and the Colonels are always harvested at the peak of freshness. They are guaranteed to be free of impurities, a new sound, clinically proven to aid in drink consumption and the courting of new love. We cull words and melodies from musical traditions around the world- some forgotten, some familiar- to warm your heart and make you dance.

Clara Johnson

Clara K Johnson is a self-trained, international artist whose talents were passed down by her paternal grandfather, Benjamin R. Harrison, the creator of The Golden Bull mascot for Johnson C. Smith University. She’s served as curator for galleries in Raleigh, NC and Houston, TX. Clara was born and raised in Rochester, New York and currently resides in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her interests are reading, traveling, everything creative and helping worthy causes.

Corn & the Colonels

Personnel: Aaron Greenhood, vocals, tenor banjo, fiddle Lauren Burke, vocals, guitar Hayden Strickling, accordion Cornelius Lewis, bass, vocals Charles Phaneuf, alto sax, clarinet Ana Mitchell, percussion Eric Oberstein, congas & percussion https://www.reverbnation.com/cornandthecolonels https://www.facebook.com/cornandthecolonels

Corn and the Colonels

Cornelius Lewis: Upright Bass Ana Mitchell: Cajon, Percussion Aaron Greenhood: Vox, Tenor Banjo, Fiddle, Tenor Guitar Lauren Burke: Vox, Guitar, Kazoo, Percussion Hayden Strickling: Accordion, Keyboard Corn and the Colonels are always harvested at the peak of freshness. They are guaranteed to be free of impurities, a new sound, clinically proven to aid in drink consumption and the courting of new love. We cull words and melodies from musical traditions around the world- some forgotten, some familiar- to warm your heart and make you dance.

Cornelius Lewis

Member of Corn and the Colonels, Upright Bass. Corn and the Colonels are always harvested at the peak of freshness. They are guaranteed to be free of impurities, a new sound, clinically proven to aid in drink consumption and the courting of new love. We cull words and melodies from musical traditions around the world- some forgotten, some familiar- to warm your heart and make you dance.

Dasan Ahanu

Dasan Ahanu is an artist, educator, and community organizer living in Durham, North Carolina. In addition to performing across the country, Dasan has hosted or coordinated many poetry, jazz, Hip Hop, and cultural arts events. He has helped to establish and grow cultural and performing arts organizations in North Carolina. Dasan is one of the founders of Black Poetry Theatre (BPT), a Durham based African American theatre company, where he is a writer, director, producer, and cast member. Dasan has been featured on national radio and TV and has published three books of poetry. He is a resident artist at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham and an alumnus Nasir Jones Fellow with the Hip Hop Archive and Research Institute at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.

David Reese

David Reese, President and CEO of East Durham Children’s Initiative, brings more than 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience to the organization. Throughout his career, David’s work has focused on creating opportunity for low-wealth families and developing chances for children to succeed. David previously served as chief operating officer for Food Recovery and Distribution at Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. He is past co-chair of Partnership for a Healthy Durham and past vice chair of Northeast Central Durham Leadership Council. He serves on the Boards of Directors of Downtown Durham Rotary Club, Durham’s Partnership for Children, East Durham Children’s Initiative, Kidznotes, and Leadership Triangle. He also serves on the Downtown Durham YMCA Advisory Board, the Mayor of Durham’s Poverty Reduction Task Forces, and on the United Way of the Greater Triangle’s Education Council. In 2006, he was recognized as one of Triangle Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 business leaders. David holds a Master of Business Administration. He hails from the Bronx, NY, and lives in Durham with his wife, Iris, and their three children.

Flavio Frohlich

Flavio’s goal is to revolutionize how we treat psychiatric illnesses. His vision is that understanding cortical state dynamics will enable the development of novel non-invasive brain stimulation paradigms that directly target pathological network dynamics. Flavio is convinced that such rational design of neurotherapeutics will open the door for individualized, highly effective brain stimulation in psychiatry. Flavio is passionate about combining different methodological approaches to scientific problems and hopes to establish the field of network neuroscience. When Flavio is not busy in the lab (ever?), he enjoys being with his wife Anita and his children (and future lab members) Sophia, Galileo, Amalia, and Leonardo.

Frederick L. Tyson

Fred Tyson, Ph.D., is a Scientific Program Director at the NIEHS in the Division of Extramural Research and Training, Cellular, Organ and Systems Pathobiology Branch. Tyson's research portfolio covers a diverse array of topics and has included programs in basic and translational research focusing on: mouse genomics, K-12 environmental health science education, biological mechanisms of health disparities, breast cancer, environmental justice, and community-based participatory research. His current research portfolio includes projects on marine toxicology and human health risks, transcriptional regulation, chromatin biology, environmental epigenetics and human epigenomics. Tyson serves as the Program Director for the NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Mapping Consortium which is supported by the NIH Common Fund, is a member of the Executive Committee for IHEC (International Human Epigenomics Consortium), and serves as a review editor for the online journal Frontiers in Epigenomics. He received his Ph.D. in cell biology and developmental genetics from the Zoology Department, the Graduate School of Rutgers University. Tyson received postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Developmental Genetics at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York City. Prior to working in the Division of Extramural Research and Training, he served as a Special Assistant to the Director of Intramural Research (DIR), NIEHS, as well as a Senior Staff Fellow in DIR. He has also been employed as a Medical Oncology Fellow at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, and as a Senior Scientist at the Sacramento Cancer Research Institute in Grand Junction, CO.

Jason Parker

Jason H. Parker is the president of the board of directors of Triangle Ultimate, a 2,500+ member community that exists to build, grow, and sustain a happy, healthy, and thriving community for people in the Triangle through the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. Jason works to advance equity and opportunity in the South at Durham-based MDC, is a partner in Durham's first distillery, Brothers Vilgalys Spirits Co., and writes about the Triangle's startup economy for WRAL Tech Wire and Exit Event.

Jesse Jur

Dr. Jess Jur is an Assistant Professor of Textile Engineering, Chemistry & Science at NC State University's College of Textiles. He has spent his career researching the interfaces of technologies from semiconductor device development to designs for textile electronics. His research at NC State focuses on engineering the design of electronics into textiles including wearable garments that harvest power from the body and monitor your environmental and physiological state. Through funding from federal agencies (like the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense), industry and NC State, Dr. Jur leads a unique multi-disciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate students. Along the way to answering the question 'why?', he finds fun ways to make people say 'wow!'.

Katja Hill

Katja HiIl is the Literary Arts Coordinator for Arts & Health at Duke, one of the nation's oldest hospital-based arts programs. Her acting credits include work in North Carolina and New York. She has adapted a variety of literature for the stage in settings ranging from celebrated theaters to retirement homes and loves putting the arts to work for new audiences, especially in health care. Her inclusive and inviting "Write for You" journal workshops at Duke University Hospital are designed to encourage and cultivate the creative spark in us all. Katja received her training at UNC School of the Arts.

Mark Anthony Neal

Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African + African-American Studies and Professor of English at Duke University where he teaches courses in Black Cultural Studies, including signature courses on “Michael Jackson and the Black Performance Tradition” and “The History of Hip-Hop,” co-taught with Grammy Award Winning Producer 9th Wonder. Neal is the author of five books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Public Culture, Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities, and co-editor, with Murray Forman, of That’s The Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Neal directs the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE) and is the host and host of Left of Black, a weekly video podcast produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center for International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke. Follow Neal on Twitter at @NewBlackMan and Instagram at @BookerBBBrown; His Digital Home is NewBlackMan (in Exile) (http://www.newblackmaninexile.net/)

Negar Mottahedeh

Negar is a cultural critic and theorist specializing in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies and Film and Media Studies. She has published four books on Iranian Cinema, the history of reform, revolution and the uses of social media in protest. Just as the world turned to social media platforms to understand the events on the ground, social media platforms adapted and developed to accommodate global activism. Negar reveals the new online ecology of social protest and offers a prehistory, of sorts, to the now infamous selfie.

Nia Wilson

Originally from Norwalk Ct., Nia Wilson is the daughter of Ronald and Elmira and the mother of Heather and Paul. She is a gifted healer, a story-teller and a cultural alchemist. She is a practical nurse who specialized in pediatric and psychiatric nursing, but found a much stronger calling working with teens and their families in drop-out, drug and pregnancy prevention. Currently, Nia serves as the Executive Director of SpiritHouse Inc., a Black women led Cultural Organizing and Arts organization, based in Durham NC, whose mission is to support and amplify the voices of people living on the margins.

Omid Safi

Omid Safi is a leading Muslim public intellectual. He is the Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center (http://islamicstudies.duke.edu/). Omid is a professor of Islamic Studies, and specializes in contemporary Islamic thought and Islamic spirituality. Omid is an award-winning teacher and speaker, and has been nominated ten times for professor of the year awards at Duke University, University of North Carolina, and Colgate University. Omid has been among the most frequently sought speakers on Islam in popular media, appearing frequently in the New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, NBC, BBC, CNN, and international media. He regularly blogs at On Being (http://www.onbeing.org/ ).

Tarish Pipkins

Tarish Pipkins aka Jeghetto. Is from Pittsburgh, PA. He moved to Chapel Hill, NC in 2005. He has been building and breathing life into his puppets for 13 years. His mission statement is, "Promoting ONENESS through the magic of Puppetry."

William Ferris

William Ferris, a widely recognized leader in Southern studies, African American music and folklore, is the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the senior associate director of its Center for the Study of the American South. The former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1997-2001), Ferris has conducted thousands of interviews with musicians ranging from the famous (B.B. King) to the unrecognized (Parchman Penitentiary inmates working in the fields). Ferris has written or edited 10 books and created 15 documentary films. He co-edited the massive "Encyclopedia of Southern Culture" (UNC Press, 1989), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His films include "Mississippi Blues" (1983), which was featured at the Cannes Film Festival. Ferris has won many prestigious honors, including the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities, the American Library Association's Dartmouth Medal, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and the W.C. Handy Blues Award. In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine named him among the Top Ten Professors in the United States.