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Staff and Associates

Debora Kodish (Director) is the founder of the Philadelphia Folklore Project. She has directed the organization since its inception in 1987 and has focused on developing projects that support the culture and folk arts of Philadelphia communities since that time. Her work has resulted in numerous exhibitions, public programs and publications, as well as opportunities for local folk artists and grassroots cultural organizations. At the PFP she has conducted field research and edited publications on Cambodian folk opera, African American social dance, Lithuanian folksongs, and other topics, and served as project director and researcher for the PFP's work on African American women tap dancers, which resulted in an exhibition which she curated and a documentary videotape for which she is a co-director. Kodish taught folklore in universities and conducted folklife research in a range of settings before beginning the PFP. She worked in some of the country's first public folklife programs, doing field research in Oregon and Maine for exhibitions and publications in the 1970s. Kodish received her Ph.D. in Folklore from the University of Texas in 1981. Her publications deal with the history of folklife study, public sector folklife, feminist approaches to folklife and the conventions that folklorists rely on in developing their work; since working at PFP she has focused on issues in public interest folklore. Her most recent publication, "Envisioning Folklore Activism" appears in the Journal of American Folklore for January 2011. She serves on the board of the Folk Arts - Cultural Treasures Charter School. She can be reached at kodish [at] folkloreproject.org.

Mia-lia Boua Kiernan (Program Assistant) brings experience as an activist and organizer to her work at PFP. She has worked as an organizer with the South Philadelphia High School Asian Student Advocates, a coalition of community organizations and individuals working to address anti-Asian/anti-immigrant violence at South Philadelphia High School (SPHS). At the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, she was the program coordinator of Southeast Asian American Action and Visibility in Education Project (Project SAVE). She is a member of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition (PICC) Public Safety Committee, and an organizer of Advocacy on Deportation - One Love Movement, which focuses on coalition building, building community pressure, creating media to raise awareness, and using the mainstream media to build political pressure for the issue of unjust deportations of immigrants. Her BA Senior Thesis at Drexel University, completed in 2008, was a case study of Cambodian deportees, examining how U.S. deportation policy violates International Human Rights Standards. In 2007, Mia-lia was a site coordinator at PFP's Cambodian Culture Camp. She can be reached at mialia [at] folkloreproject.org

Selina Morales (Program Associate) coordinates PFP's public programs and our Community Folklife Documentation Workshop. She is a doctoral candidate in folklore at Indiana University, where she completed her M.A., also in folklore. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Oberlin College. She has worked in public folklore at Traditional Arts Indiana and the Mathers Museum, where she curated exhibitions. She can be reached at smorales [at] folkloreproject.org

Toni Shapiro-Phim (Program Specialist) is a dance ethnologist with a specialization in the performing arts of Southeast Asia. She received her Ph.D in cultural anthropology from Cornell University in 1994. Her dissertation, "Dance and the Spirit of Cambodia," recent books (Dance in Cambodia with Ashley Thompson and Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice co-edited with Naomi Jackson) and other publications focus on the history and cultural context of dance around the world, particularly in relation to violence and gender concerns. She has conducted ethnographic research in Cambodian communities in Southeast Asia and the U.S. At PFP for six years, and at Khmer Arts in Cambodia for three, she designed and implemented public arts, educational and documentation programs in diverse settings. She has held teaching and research appointments at the University of California-Berkeley, San Jose State University, Yale and Mills College, and has served as a consultant for the Asia Society, Japan Foundation, New England Folklife Project and other organizations. She is now back at PFP, responsible for oversight of folk arts education programs, and PFP special initiatives. She can be reached at toni [at] folkloreproject.org

Ife Nii-Owoo (Graphic Design) runs Ife Designs and Associates, an award-winning design company. She has designed the PFP's publications (including books, videos, calendars and other print media) for more than a decade. She can be reached at ife@ifedesigns.com

Patricia Frahme (Accountant) manages PFP's financial systems.

Judy Smith / Rhizoid manages our website.

Teaching Artists currently include:

  • Kormassa Bobo, Liberian dance
  • Sifu Shu Pui Cheung and Helen Gym, Chinese hung gar kung fu and lion dance
  • Gbahtuo Comgbaye, Liberian storytelling
  • Fatu Gayflor, Liberian song
  • Linda Goss, storyteller
  • Kurt Jung and Qin Qian, Chinese instruments (erhu and yangquin)
  • Shuyuan Li, Beijing Opera
  • Than Nhan Ngo, Vietnamese dan tranh
  • Thavro Phim, Cambodian chayyam
  • Losang Samten, Tibetan sand mandala
  • Zaye Tete, Liberian song
  • Dorothy Wilkie, John Wilkie, Ama Schley, Angela Watson and Ishmael Jackson, West African and Afro-Caribbean dance
  • Chamroeun Yin, Cambodian craft traditions

Board members (2009 - 2010)

Funders

The Philadelphia Folklore Project is supported by the donations of members (people like you who are committed to sustaining diverse and vital community arts) and by a number of generous funders. We are grateful to all of you. Recent funders have included:

  • The National Endowment for the Arts
  • The National Endowment for the Arts - Recovery Act
  • The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
  • The Pennsylvania Humanities Council
  • The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
  • The Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development 
  • The Philadelphia Cultural Fund
  • The William Penn Foundation
  • The Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage through Dance Advance
  • The Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage through the Heritage Philadelphia Program
  • The Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage through the Philadelphia Music Project
  • The Pew Charitable Trusts
  • Artography: Arts in a Changing America, a grant and documentation program of Leveraging Investments in Creativity, funded by the Ford Foundation
  • The Jacob and Malka Goldfarb Foundation
  • The Samuel Fels Fund
  • Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation
  • Henrietta Tower Wurts Foundation
  • The Hilles Foundation
  • The Douty Foundation
  • PNC Arts Alive
  • and our many generous individual donors and members!