Bren Vienrich-Felling (she/ her) is an artist and educator who explores documentary-driven stories within the mediums of cinematic expression, photography and printmaking. Her work has focused on themes related to human connections in nature, women’s issues and cultural identity. Born in Lima, Peru in 1987, Bren immigrated to the United States at a young age and grew up in North Carolina. Following her graduation from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she received a BFA in Studio Art, she worked as a multimedia artist for fourteen years and led roles as designer, consultant and art director for a variety of clients. She has collaborated with others on projects that span animation, filmmaking, design and photography. She is a graduate student within the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program at Duke University.
Faculty Type: Graduate Fellows
Sadé M Jones
Sadé M Jones is a movement alchemist. Her talent as a dancer, choreographer and theater maker paired with her expertise as a Trauma Informed Yoga Facilitator, social psychologist, griot and energy worker supports this. Her research and practice lives within the intersections and fringes of somatic, cultural discourse, performance and the healing arts. Her healing practice, SADEIZM Movement Alchemy provides artistic, mindful and culturally relevant ways for individuals and groups to embody innate wholeness and walk their path with it. Her award winning work has been featured at Women & Their Work, The Vortex, The Long Center, University of Louisville, Dixon Place, Collegium Of African Diasporic Dance. Sadé holds a graduate degree in Social Psychology and is a 2025 candidate for a Master’s of Fine Arts at Duke University where she will be studying Dance as Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis.
Indigo Cook
Indigo Cook is a second-year student in the Duke dance program’s MFA in Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, they work within the intersection of movement, music, and contemporary performance practices of experimental and avant-garde art. They relish any opportunity to listen deeply, move wildly, and remain ever in flux.
Wanyi Chen
Wanyi Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science. She is from China and received a B.A. in computer science and cultural studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019. She worked as a software engineer at Audible before joining graduate school. Her current research centers around Human-AI interaction. She investigates the subjectivities involved in machine learning model creation and aims to build tools to help fellow computer scientists think more critically about the models they are training. At Duke, she served as a teaching assistant for the “Race, Gender, Class, and Computing” class.
Stephen Zaksewicz
Stephen is a Ph.D. candidate in the joint Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies. His dissertation examines the relationship between conceptions of nature and models of worldhood in contemporary Austrian prose, from global to planetary existences in the Anthropocene, against a history of nature writing and the cultural and political significance of nature in the Austrian contexts. He is also an “Austrophile,” having spent two years as an English Teaching Assistant in Linz and a year conducting dissertation research in Vienna through Fulbright Austria. He is most likely to be found hiking a mountain, at the opera, playing volleyball, at his cello, hunched over a board game, or studying a new language.
Lexi Holloway
Alexis Ligon Holloway is a Cultural Anthropology Ph.D. candidate and Dean’s Graduate Fellow at Duke University. Stemming from personal experience, her research explores how the mechanisms of white supremacy operate in classical music performance, examining how racial and aesthetic hierarchies position Black bodies as aberrant in these spaces. Specifically, Alexis’s research centers on the resilience and resistance that Black musicians display in the face of racism in classical music pedagogy and performance. As a filmmaker, Alexis hopes to produce a multi-modal dissertation, consisting of a written portion and an accompanying documentary that attends to the aural and performative aspects of her research.