Graduate Affiliates

Born and raised along the Texas border, Andrea moved to Austin to purse an M.A. in Media Studies. She received a B.A. in Communication with a minor in English at Texas A&M International University. At commencement, Andrea served as the Distinguished Student Scholar for the College of Arts and Sciences -- the university's largest academic unit. 

During her undergraduate years, Andrea took an interest in the concerns surrounding child influencers on social media. She composed a qualitative research proposal on this topic, examining monetary utilization, privacy, and exploitation. She plans to expand her research to provide comprehensive understand of the novel child influencers and to enable the development of policies protecting children's rights. 

Beyond academia, Andrea is an avid lover of film and art. If she is not at the theater, she is at a café practicing her calligraphy on a napkin. 

Morgan is a first-year MA student in RTF at UT Austin. She completed her Bachelor's Degree in Media Studies at Pacific University and Whitman College. Her undergraduate studies focused on various phenomena taking place on YouTube, including the influx of long-form nostalgic video essays and YouTuber-centered fanbases. She is especially interested in the various ways in which the same information can be conveyed to different results, and how communities develop through the use of the internet.

Evan Chronis is a screenwriter and novelist with a knack for combining words into sometimes funny and occasionally profound sentences. He is equally interested in deeply felt stories that strive to reveal something about the world and the people in it and hyper-entertaining, dialogue-driven genre flicks. Highfalutin or otherwise, he strives to incorporate humor into everything he writes. He digs reading, running, and noodling about on the guitar. He likes tacos.

Channing Smith (she/her) is a documentary filmmaker with 7 years of experience, who uses the craft to illuminate diverse realities and truths. Her work aims to capture authentic stories offering insight into different aspects of the human experience; ranging from incarceration to the impacts of COVID-19. She is venturing into narrative storytelling as she enters the MFA Production program. Currently, Channing is in post-production on her first feature documentary, Lost Time.

Yuqi is a filmmaker from China currently pursuing an MFA in film production. After gaining recognition with several award-winning short films, she has discovered her passion for blending comedy and drama. Her goal is to capture the vibrant, emotional, and sometimes chaotic moments that define our dynamic world.

Kumar Mayank completed his engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi and worked a few corporate jobs before getting into filmmaking. Since then he has assisted on and off in TV commercials, feature length films and has worked as a freelancer in Mumbai.

He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in filmmaking from UT Austin.

Christian Meola is a writer and director from Albany, New York. He graduated from Florida State University in 2016 and lived in Los Angeles for six years before enrolling in the University of Texas at Austin’s MFA Film production program. Christian works in a variety of mediums, ranging from narrative to video art and theater. He's particularly interested in how individuals form their identities based on larger societal constructs. Recently, he’s been exploring the relationship between between straight and gay men, as well as how masculinity and a need for vulnerability influence male behavior. He’s interested in meeting other UT students with an interest in researching and creatively exploring these topics. His work has been screened at Indie Memphis, Oak Cliff Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival, Adirondack Film Festival, Buried Alive, Sick 'n' Wrong, Sydney Underground, Electric Forest Music Festival, and on PBS, NoBudge, and Beyond the Short. In 2020, he won Sick n' Wrong's "You're Special" award.

Luis Rivera-Figueroa is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Radio-Television-Film department at The University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the transnational production networks of Latin Music in the United States, Latin America, and the Hispanic Caribbean. His work can be found in the Journal of Latin American Communication Research and Flow TV. In addition, Rivera-Figueroa has worked on the editorial team of journals such as the Journal of Latin American Communication Research, The Velvet Light Trap, Designis, and Flow TV.
 

NGUYEN Luong Hang is a director, producer from Ho Chi Minh City interested in exploring the Vietnamese female identity and its relationships with family and grief in film. Her debut short THE STORY OF US (2014) screened at the 2016 Focus on Asia Fukuoka FF. She served as producer to Trinh Dinh Le Minh's award-winning debut feature GOODBYE MOTHER (2019), considered one of the first LGBTQ films out of Vietnam to participate in the international cinematic scene and selected by prestigious festivals in Busan, Hawaii and Toronto before its distribution on Netflix Vietnam. Her latest short as director, SUPERMARKET AFFAIRS (2022), is currently on the festival circuit and has screened at Osaka Asian FF, CAAMFest and Palm Springs ShortFest. She is also an alumna of Singapore IFF's Southeast Asian Film Lab, Locarno Open Doors Lab and EAVE Ties That Bind. At the moment, she is pursuing an MFA in Film Production at the University of Texas at Austin with a Fulbright scholarship. Her MFA thesis ROOFTOP LEMPICKA received the 2022 AFS Grant for Short Films and is in post-production with an anticipated festival run in the fall of 2023. The debut feature project of the same name is in development, has been selected for the Munich Film Up! residential program and Full Circle Lab Philippines - Fiction Lab. 

I am an impassioned writer and disability rights activist. My research focuses on media's aesthetic investments in warfare, carceral biopolitics, and affect at the intersections of identity, bodily autonomy, and ability. Born from this emphasis, I analyze how media frames the human as a rhetorical space of power. I love to read, cook, play the violin, and hang out with my cat.