In addition to working as a documentary director/producer, Christine Delp is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota, where she holds a National Science Foundation Fellowship. Her dissertation explores how documentary filmmakers engage in the practice of representing the “real”. How do documentary filmmakers understand truth and their role in capturing it? How are documentary filmmakers’ representational practices positioned by competing artistic, moral, and political commitments within the documentary field? How are documentary filmmakers adapting to a rapidly changing marketplace and shifting public trust in media? How are they innovating new structures for ethics and accountability?

As a filmmaker and social scientist studying the film world, her two careers constantly inform each other. She firmly believes her experience as a filmmaker makes her a better sociologist and her perspective as a sociologist makes her a better filmmaker.