Ferrel Guillory is director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life, an interdisciplinary program based in the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, that connects scholarship to the agenda and leadership in North Carolina and the South.

Guillory is a lecturer in the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication as well as a senior fellow at MDC, Inc., a workforce and economic development non-profit research firm in Chapel Hill.

Guillory served as moderator for a “summit’’ of governors and congressmen on textile policy issues. He also was a member of the Education First Task Force appointed by Governor Mike Easley. In addition, he served on the steering committee of the Rural Prosperity Task Force, appointed by Governor Jim Hunt and chaired by Erskine Bowles. In summer 2004, he served as the writer for a study team that produced the report, “New Traditions: Options for Rural High School Excellence,’’ for the Southern Governors’ Association.

Through MDC, he has co-authored The State of the South, a series of biennial reports to the region and its leadership (1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004). He also co-authored The Carolinas: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: An Exploration of Social and Economic Trends, 1924-1999 (Duke Press, 1999), commissioned by the Duke Endowment.

Before working in academia, Guillory spent more than 20 years as a reporter, editorial page editor and columnist for The News and Observer in Raleigh. He has had free-lance articles published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, The New Republic, America, Commonweal, Southern Cultures and The Atlanta Constitution. Guillory has contributed chapters to books on David Duke and the politics of race, on economic transition in tobacco regions and on North Carolina politics and government. He received a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University New Orleans and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Guillory was born in Lutcher, La., and he grew up in Baton Rouge. He lives in Raleigh with his wife, Kathleen. They have three children -- Kristen, Lesley and Justin.