Joseph Jordan
Director
919-962-9001
jfjordan@email.unc.edu
Christopher Wallace
Communiversity and Undergraduate Programs Manager
919-962-7264
chrislw@email.unc.edu
Sheriff Drammeh
Senior Program Manager
919-843-2669
sheriff7@email.unc.edu
Javier Jaimes-Ayala
Facilities Manager
919-962-7025
jaimes@email.unc.edu
Saskia Staimpel
Administrative Manager
919-843-2668
saskiag@live.unc.edu
Gregg Moore
Assistant Stone Center Librarian
919-843-5804
moorejg@email.unc.edu
Joseph Jordan
Director
Joseph Jordan is Director (since 2001) of the Sonja H. Stone Center for Black Culture and History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Adjunct Associate Professor, African/African American and Diaspora Studies. His work focuses on social justice movements in the diaspora, and the cultural politics of race, identity and artistic production in the diaspora, explored through representations in visual and other creative arts.
His selected published work includes: Cabral, Solidarity and the African Diaspora in the Americas (book chapter) in Cabral no Cruzamento de Épocas: Comunicações e Discursos Produzidos no II Simpósio Internacional Amílcar Cabral (2013); Can the Artist Speak? Hamid Kachmar’s Subversive Redemptive Art of Resistance in Bodies of Knowledge: Interviews, African Art, and Scholarly Narratives, Joanna Grabski and Caro
l Magee, eds., (Indiana, 2012); and The Call of Revolution: The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the 1970’s (book chapter) in No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists, 1953-2002. ed. by Charles Cobb, Jr., Gail Hovey, and William Minter. (Africa World Press, 2007).
Selected curatorial work includes: Aswarm With the Spirits of All Ages Here: Inconceivable Spaces of Slavery and Freedom: The Work of Toni Scott. 25 January – 30 April 2018; Amiri Baraka: Meetings and Remarkable Journeys; This Story Has Not Yet Been Told: The Art of Tim Okamura; Nina Simone: What More Can I Say; Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America; and 35 others in the last 15 years across the US, Latin America and Africa.
Before coming to UNC he served as Director, The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta and was associate professor and founding chair of African American/African Studies at Antioch College in Ohio, Associate Professor at Xavier University of Louisiana and Assistant Professor, Human Ecology, Howard University. He’s served as Visiting Professor, Instituto Superior de Educação, Cape Verde and Visiting Professor, Universidad Politecnica Argelia Laya, Venezuela; Associate Professor/Founding chair. He was also a Supervisory Senior Research Specialist at the Library of Congress.
He currently serves on the Boards of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) and the Stagville (NC) State Historic Site Foundation. He is Chair of the Historic Preservation Commission of Durham, NC and a founding Board member and current advisory board member for Our Children’s Place – for the Children of Incarcerated Mothers. He also serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of The Black Scholar – Journal of Black Studies and Research and of PALARA – Publication of the Afro-Latin American Research Association.
Sheriff Drammeh
Senior Program Manager
Sheriff Drammeh is the Senior Program Manager for Arts Culture and Community Programs at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center. Since joining the Center in 2014, Sheriff has led planning and organizing efforts for the Annual Stone Memorial and Diaspora Lectures, the Diaspora Festival of Black and Independent Film, numerous art exhibitions hosted in the Stone Center’s Brown Gallery, cultural performances — among them the one-woman play on the life of Big Mama Thornton entitled “Houn’ Dawg” featuring artist Azusa SHESHE Dance and the one-man show “POWER!” on the life of Stokely Carmichael by DC-based actor/playwright Meshaun Labrone. Sheriff also coordinated symposia — on Amiri Baraka and the Black arts movement, Black bookstores, the 1619 Project to name a few — and community workshops (including one on Bomba Dance) led by Stone Center guest artists.
Sheriff holds undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Communication (with a minor in journalism) from NC State University and graduate degrees in International Development and Conflict Management from Brandeis University.
Javier Jaimes-Ayala
Facilities Manager
Javier Jaimes-Ayala is the Facilities Manager at the Stone Center. Originally from Mexico city, Mexico, Javier first joined UNC in the Department of Public Safety as a security guard for 10 years. He also spent 5 years at UNC hospitals as a General Manager for Environmental Services, Patient Transportation and Guest Services. In addition to his work at the Stone Center, he also owns and operates a commercial/residential cleaning company.
Gregg Moore
Stone Center Assistant Librarian
Gregg Moore is a Rocky Point, NC native who studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has more than a decade of library experience as a former employee of the Wake County Public Libraries in Raleigh.
Saskia Staimpel is the Stone Center’s new Administrative Manager. A 2021 graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, Saskia double majored in African, African American Diaspora Studies and Global Studies. She served as the Sean Douglas Leadership Fellow in the 2020 – 2021 academic year and most recently coordinated the 2022 session of the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (MURAP). She has published research on the radical, grassroots organizing of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and presented her work that explores the drive behind Afro-Brazilian women’s grassroots organizing.