°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²ÊÔ¤²â

Ph.D. Student, Department of History

Research Interests:
Kristel’s area of focus is San Antonio history and the documentation of cultural bearers and San Antonio artists, particularly Tomás Ybarra- Frausto and Octavio Medellín. Her research interest also includes film, intersectional feminism, activism, the borderlands, fashion and rasquachismo – an underdog barrio sensibility of hybridization and integration used for survival by means of aesthetic cultural expression. 

Road to the Moody School:
Kristel is a nontraditional first- generation scholar who completed her Associate of Arts in photography at San Antonio College in 2017. She continued her educational journey at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she earned her B.A. in Mexican American studies in 2019 and her M.A. in history in 2021. Outside of research, Kristel is a photographer, a rasquacha artist and a community historian whose work intersects with her work as a scholar activist to build bridges between those who produce knowledge and the community that is the source of that knowledge.