James D. Kelly

James D. Kelly brings a photojournalist’s eye to the board. He is the director of journalism for the Indiana University Media School and previously served as the first director of undergraduate studies for the Media School.

Kelly’s research includes the influence of digital imaging technology on news photo credibility and audience understanding of photojournalism ethics.

Early in his career, he worked as a staff photographer for the South Bend Tribune and for the Associated Press in West Virginia. He received a doctorate in mass communication from Indiana University in 1990. He was on the School of Journalism faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale until 2007, when he joined the Indiana University School of Journalism (now part of the Media School).

Since 1990, Kelly has participated in a series of projects in South Asia and East Africa aimed at strengthening the practice of journalism and the ties between mass media newsrooms and journalism departments at universities. In 1998, he spent his sabbatical at the Open University of Sri Lanka where he wrote a textbook to help journalists there use the internet. In 2019, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya, where he researched job motivation and satisfaction among healthcare workers working for AMPATH, a 33-year partnership between the medical schools at IU and Moi University. 

He is the former editor of Visual Communication Quarterly and is co-editor of “The Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media,” published by Routledge, 2020.

IU Press will publish his forthcoming book, “From HIV/AIDS to Population Health: How an American University and a Kenyan Medical School Transformed Healthcare in East Africa,” in November 2022.

Kelly and his wife, Carol, have two daughters, Anna and Megan. He describes himself as “an avid, if slow, bicyclist.” He is a native of West Virginia and lives in Bloomington.