Dwight DeVane
Folklorist Dwight DeVane worked for the FFP during its early years. Devane initially worked as a resource consultant for the North Florida Folklife Project in 1978 with fellow folklorists Brenda McCallum and Peggy Bulger. After graduate studies at Western Kentucky University, Dwight co-directed and co-produced (with McCallum) the Drop On Down in Florida project in 1980, which resulted in a two-disc album of field recordings. Funded in part through an NEA grant, this project -- with assistance from Bulger and Doris Dyen -- documented and examined sacred and secular music forms found within Florida’s African-American communities. (This project is scheduled for reissue in 2008).

In 1981, Dwight was the folklorist/project director for another NEA-funded project, the Folk Arts in the Schools (Tampa/Hillsborough County). Working with the Hillsborough County School System, the Tampa-Hillsborough County Arts Council and the Florida Folklife Program, this project incorporated the study of regional, ethnic, and occupational folklife within the existing format of the mandated Florida Studies curriculum in five fourth- and eighth- grade classes. Devane, who is also a musician (guitarist-fiddler), lives in the Gainesville area.

Mary Anne McDonald
Dr. McDonald is currently an ethnographer with the Department of Occupational Medicine at Duke University. After receiving her M.A. in Folklore from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, she spent two decades documenting North Carolina folklife, including publishing in several journals. She also served as president of the North Carolina Folklore Society, which in 2003 awarded McDonald the Brown-Hudson Award for preserving, researching, and disseminating folklore. She later received a doctorate in Public Health, also from the University of North Carolina. In 1985, she worked with Kathleen Figgen on the St. Johns River Survey for the Florida Folklife Program.

Peter Roller
Ethnomusicologist Roller is an assistant professor of music at Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is currently working on a doctoral dissertation about garage rock bands. Roller is also an accomplished music producer and guitarist. In 1986, he produced the album, Mandolin Blues Man, with Yank Rachell (1910-1997). While with the Florida Folklife Program, Roller worked on the Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program, the Florida Folk Arts Survey, and the Maritime Heritage Survey.

David Reddy
Today the Resource Center Director for the Florida Humanities Council, Reddy worked for the FFP in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Projects that Reddy worked on during his tenure as a state folklorist include the Dudley Farm Project, the Florida Folk Arts Survey, the Sponge Industry Folk Arts Festival, Rural Folklife Days and the Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program.

Teresa Hollingsworth
Hollingsworth is Traditional Arts Manager for the Southern Arts Federation, in Atlanta. A graduate of the Folklife Program at Western Kentucky University, she has also worked for the Maine Folklife Center. While employed with the FFP in the early 1990s, Hollingsworth worked on the Rural Folklife Days, the Central Florida Folklife Survey and the Duval County Folk Arts in Education program.

Betsy Peterson
Dr. Peterson is the program director for the Fund for Folk Culture, based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. A graduate of the Indian University Folklife Program, she has also worked as traditional arts director for the New England Foundation for the Arts, the program coordinator for Texas Folklife Resources, and a visiting folklore professor at UCLA. While working for the FFP, Peterson worked on the Ida Goodson Recording Project and the Traveling Entertainment Recording Project.

Jon Kay
Kay is director for Indiana’s state folklife program, Traditional Arts Indiana. After graduating from Western Kentucky University’s Folklife Program, Kay worked as the Florida Park Service folklorist, based at the Stephen Foster Center in White Springs between 1997 and 2004. In addition to serving as director of the Florida Folk Festival from 2002 to 2004, he also conducted research and offered educational folklife programs in the White Springs area. While in Florida, Kay also worked for the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, wrote for the Florida Humanities Council and participated in numerous exhibits and public programs. In addition to fieldwork, Kay is also a widely respected dulcimer musician.

Bob McNeil

McNeil was the archivist, as well as a fieldworker, for the Florida Folklife Program in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His indexing system was integral to creation of the present database. A native of Pensacola, McNeil received his master's degree in American History at the University of West Florida. After several years with the FFP, he transferred to the Museum of Florida History as a historian with interests in Native American and immigrant studies. Bob's major exhibition projects in the last ten years included Sunshine and the Silver Screen: A Century of Florida Films; and Follow That Dream: Florida’s Rock and Roll Legends. He recently drew upon his folklife experience for the 2005 exhibit, Florida’s Got the Blues, which included material from Mary McClain, Johnny Brown, and Moses Williams.