BIO

Jeannelle is a writer, researcher, cultural producer, educator, and multimedia artist based in Austin, Texas. She currently works as a program manager at Texas Folklife, a statewide public folklore organization, and is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. 

At Texas Folklife, she oversees the Stories from Deep in the Heart program, an audio storytelling training program for students, teachers, and community members. She launched the organization’s Community Folklife Fellowship program, a statewide public folklore initiative that trains a cohort of adults on how to conduct folklore projects in their own communities and produce audio stories from their research. 

Jeannelle’s ethnomusicology research focuses on Latinx festivals, technology,  futurity, and experimentalism. In particular, she is interested in how US Latinx artists and cultural producers create platforms and networks to nurture and sustain boundary-pushing experimental and alternative cultural expressions of Latinidad across mediums, including performance, multimedia art, music, and video. She has also conducted field research in Buenos Aires on the digital folklore scene. 

Jeannelle founded Future Traditions Fest in Austin, a platform for experimental Latinx performance and multimedia that explores connections to traditional Latin American music and performance practice. The festival included curated collaborations between electronic and traditional musicians as well as boundary-pushing work from composers, musicians, and multimedia artists. 

In addition to her public folklore, academic research, and cultural production work, she sits on the board of Cine Las Americas, an Austin-based film festival featuring work from Latinx,  Latin American, and indigenous filmmakers across the continent. She also creates experimental electronic music under the name Las Raras and performs regularly in Austin. Jeannelle holds a BA/BFA in Jazz Performance from The New School and a masters in Ethnomusicology from UT Austin. 

When not working, she can be found paddle boarding, singing boleros, or hanging out with her seventeen-year-old Jack Russel pup.