Saskia Cornes

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session II

Dr. Saskia Cornes took the helm at the Duke Campus Farm in June 2014. Saskia holds a PhD in English Literature from Columbia University and teaches in the environmental humanities through Duke's Franklin Humanities Institute. A farmer by vocation, she learned regenerative agriculture through a range of apprenticeships on urban and rural farms, and through post-graduate study in organic agriculture at the Center for Agroecology at UC Santa Cruz. She has been working in and around the campus farm movement since 2009, designing experiential curricula in critical food studies for Columbia University, the University of San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz and Hostos Commmunity College.In her work now, she weaves teaching, farming, and more traditional forms of research together to rework our relationship to climate, and our relationship to food, and the land and people that grow it. Saskia heads up DCF's academic efforts, including teaching and research collaborations at/with the farm, DCF's interface with campus-wide initiatives including Duke's climate commitment, and guides the strategic direction of the program.  

Ngoc Minh Ngo

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session II

Ngoc's images have been published in such publications as The World of Interiors, T Magazine, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Cabana, and House & Garden UK. She is the author of three books, Bringing Nature Home: Floral Arrangements Inspired by Nature; In Bloom: Creating and Living with Flowers, and Eden Revisited: A Garden in Northern Morocco, all published by Rizzoli.

Her work has been the subject of a solo show at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech and Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center in the Bronx, New York.

Ngoc received the Land Place Spirit Award from Longhouse Reserve in 2022.

https://www.ngocminhngo.com

Melody Nixon

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session II

Melody Nixon is a pākehā writer, editor, and artist living in the Bay Area, California. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD from the History of Consciousness department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research addresses contemporary poetry and visual art in Te Moana-nui-a-kiwa, the Pacific. She currently advises creative writing Masters students at Columbia University and in the Master of Creative Performance Practice program at Toi Whakaari O Aotearoa. 

Melody's essays, criticism, fiction and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The London Review of Books, Contemporary HUM, Landfall, ReadingRoom, Literary Hub, BOMB Magazine, Guernica, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, Public Books, Entropy Magazine, Cura Magazine, Midnight Breakfast, No Dear Magazine, Gutter Magazine, Bloom, Positionen, Hoax Publication, The Pariah Anthology from SFASU Press, and Columbia Journal, among others. Their artistic projects have been performed in or documented by USF Bergen, Norway (2015); Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany (2016); Tinos Quarry Platform, Greece (2016, 2017); Arte Digeribile, Italy (2016); Emergency Index by Ugly Duckling Press, Brooklyn (2017),  Melodie Michel, UC Santa Cruz (2018). They have been interviewed by The Hairpin, and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, and appeared on The Anti-Americana podcast.

From 2013-2020 Melody was the Interviews Editor of Amherst College-based literary and arts journal The Common, and for three years she was Co-Curator of the Harlem, NYC performance series First Person Plural. Melody is the Co-Founder of literary and arts journal, Apogee Journal. And with novelist Noelle Harrison she co-founded Aurora Writers' Retreats in the UK and Ireland in 2017.

 Melody holds an MFA in nonfiction creative writing from Columbia University, and is represented by Renee Zuckerbrot of MMQLit Literary in New York City. She is currently at work on a lyric memoir.

v

Casey Lance Brown

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session II

Casey Lance Brown is a landscape futurist who studied at Duke University, Harvard Design School, and is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Through field research, geospatial analysis and alternative capture techniques, he maps the accidental terraforming of the Anthropocene era. Infrared imagery, data visualization and temporal composites highlight the vast imprints of geotrauma on the planet. His works have been awarded by American Academy in Rome (2011), Photoville’s The Fence (2016), and Lenscratch (2024). His series have been exhibited @ the Contemporary Museum of Art in Raleigh, @ Miami Art Week (2022), and in the Fifth National Climate Assessment for the US Global Research Program (2023-24). Brown publishes work on landscape futures in various outlets such as Volume, LA+ SPECULATION, and KERB Journal of Landscape Architecture.

Decay, abandonment, toxic legacies and the fallout of past environmental failures erupt in the foreground in my digital and analog paintings. Built from a base of intensive research, my series juxtapose something highly foreign with the native, something technological with the organic, and/or something extant with the extinct. The contrasts help interrogate how we arrived at our current geotraumatic state.

Brown also has served as an art and design critic at various universities including MIT, Harvard Design School, Clemson University, University of Tennessee, Aarhus University (DN) and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

https://caseylancebrown.com

Caroline Edwards

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session II

Caroline Edwards is a PhD candidate at Indiana University whose research explores how environmental and geographic factors shape plant diversity, with a focus on native violets (Viola). Caroline’s work bridges field ecology, evolutionary biology, and science communication, while also emphasizing collaboration and community-building through teaching, mentoring, and leading a plant evolution and ecology journal club.

Outside of academia, they are an active member of a community dance studio, where practices centered on reflection, shared values, and authentic expression inform their approach to both science and creative exchange.

Brooke E. Sykes

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session II

Brooke Sykes is a doctoral student in the School of Plant Sciences. A native of Phoenix, she graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences, and from University of Mississippi with a master’s degree in Biology. Her master’s research included cultivating bacteria from bird feathers, which prompted her interest in the ecological factors that shape community composition and the mediators of host-microbe interactions. Her doctoral focus will be the evolution and persistence of species associations, especially between microbes and their plant hosts. Outside of the lab, Brooke enjoys mountain-biking with her dog, running, live music, art, cooking, and being active in the community.

Alafia Nicole Sessions

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session II

Alafia Nicole Sessions is a black poet, writer and mother living in Atlanta. She currently works as an educator, actress, herbalist and birthworker. Nine Drops of Turpentine, Alafia's debut poetry collection, was selected by Victoria Chang as the winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize and will be published by University of Georgia Press in March 2027.

Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in POETRY, Obsidian, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Ecopoetry Anthology, Southern Humanities Review, Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review, Poetry Daily and elsewhere. Alafia is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, Yaddo, The Watering Hole, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Money For Women / The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, SWWIM and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. The 2025 winner of Georgia Writers' John Lewis Writing Grant, Alafia was selected by Evie Shockley as the winner of the 2023 Furious Flower Prize. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, thrice nominated for Best New Poets and selected as a semi-finalist for The Adroit Journal's Gregory Djanikian Scholarship. Alafia also received the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry.

Her debut manuscript was selected as an Honorable Mention by Patricia Smith for the Jake Adam York Prize, a finalist for the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize. 

https://www.nicolesessions.com

Noël Kassewitz

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session I

Noël Kassewitz (b.1990, Miami) is a contemporary artist and third-generation Floridian based in Washington, D.C. After receiving her BFA from the University of Florida, she worked with the Rubell Museum and later, living abroad, completed an artist residency in Carrara, Italy with marble master sculptor Boutros Romhein. In addition to her studio practice, she currently works in sculpture conservation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. 

Kassewitz has given an artist talk at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, is a five-time recipient of the DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities’ Visual Artist Fellowship Grant, and was recently named an inaugural Environmental Justice ‘Artivist’ Fellow with Social Arts & Culture + Aspen Institute (2024). She has been an artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Art Center on Governors Island (summer 2022) and at Vermont Studio Center through the VSC/Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship (autumn 2022).

Her work is held in various private collections as well the public art collections of the District of Columbia, the University of Maryland, and the University of Florida and the corporate collections of MindTree and Outerknown.

https://www.noelkassewitz.com/about

Sharon Lee Hart

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session I

Sharon Lee Hart is a South Florida-based artist whose practice engages place through experimental and more sustainable photographic methods and archival recombination. Working across photography, mixed media, and artist books, she examines layered living environments and has an ongoing collaboration rooted in visual dialogue. While maintaining an active studio practice, Hart is an Associate Professor of Art at Florida Atlantic University. With an environmental focus, she has worked as an artist-in-residence at Joshua Tree National Park (Joshua Tree, CA), The Oak Spring Garden Foundation (Upperville, VA), and The Studios of Key West (Key West, FL). Hart was awarded the 2025 Distinguished Woman Artist’s Prize from the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County and the 2023 SECAC Artist’s Fellowship Award. Her work is in several permanent collections, including the King County Public Art Collection (Seattle, WA) and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Missouri), and has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and internationally.

https://sharonleehart.com/home.html

Paul Mok

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session I

Paul Mok (b. 1990) is a New York-based Hong Kong visual artist. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Architectural Studies from the University of Hong Kong and his Master’s Degree in Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His works have been shown in galleries and events such as Gallery GAIA in Brooklyn, Art Mora Gallery in New Jersey, New Collectors in Manhattan, and Art on Paper at Pier 36. His work has been featured in publications including Wallpaper, Cultured Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, FAD, Pattern, Cultbyte, and Art Spiel.

https://www.paul-mok.com

Nita Monteiro

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session I

Nita is a Visual artist, born in Volta Redonda (RJ) in 1990 and raised in Angra dos Reis, currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.

Her artistic practice is dedicated to investigating the materials that inhabit the domestic, emotional and everyday space. The fragments of objects present in her works are not treated as mere objects but as remnants of consciousness, witnesses of family life, and guardians of memories and stories. From these materials and other textile elements, the artist resignifies, recomposes, and creates new narratives as a way of fictionalizing life, intertwining stories heard and lived, science and myth, past and present. At times, fantastic realities are created; at other times, biographical fictions, always seeking to establish a bridge between past and present, allowing narratives to be reimagined.

As a creative method, the artist, influenced by the universe of manual craftsmanship—a practice rooted in the feminine tradition of her family—resurrects and incorporates techniques from popular craftsmanship. Additionally, she draws inspiration from the old decorations of architecture and furniture, especially those found in her grandparents' homes, often baroque or rococo, evoking an aesthetic of excess. In the final work, the presence of handcrafted making, exuberant ornamentation, exaggeration, and kitsch is evident—elements that become recurring and essential in her compositions.

Graduated in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of São Paulo (USP). In 2025, she held her first solo exhibition, titled "Welcome. If you come in peace, come on in", at MARP (Museum of Art of Ribeirão Preto). She was part of the 34th Exhibition Program at the São Paulo Cultural Center. She received the Acquisition Prize at the 49th SARP and an honorary award at the 18th Ubatuba Visual Arts Salon. She participated in Contextile – Contemporary Textile Art Biennial in Portugal, as well as exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Inconfidência, National Museum of the Republic, Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Victor Meirelles Museum, and Banco do Nordeste Cultural Center, among others.

She has undertaken artist residencies at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (USA), Córtex Frontal (Portugal), the Institute of Contemporary Art of Ouro Preto, Luis Malug Gallery and Casero (Brazil).

Her work is part of the collections of the National Museum of the Republic (Brasilia - Brazil), MARP  (Museum of Art of Ribeirao Preto - Brazil),The National Museum of Fine Arts (Rio de Janeiro-Brazil) ant the REC Cultural Institute (Recife - Brazil) as well as several private collections.

https://www.nitamonteiro.com

Michelle Peñaloza

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session I

Michelle Peñaloza is the author of All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems, winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and the James Laughlin Award, awarded by The Academy of American Poets to recognize and support a second book of poetry forthcoming in the next calendar year. (Persea Books, 2025). She is also the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019), and two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). Some of her honors include the Frederick Bock Prize from the Poetry Foundation as well as grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, Upstate Creative Corps, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Literary Arts, and PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists). You can find her work at The Seventh Wave, Poetry, Honey Literary, Bellingham Review, New England Review, Lantern Review, and featured in American Life in Poetry. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in Covelo, CA.

Hampton Smith

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week, Session I

Hampton is a doctoral candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Currently, he is writing his dissertation, “Making against Slavery: A Material History of Abolition in the Early United States.” and has also begun working on a second project, “King Pulp and the Preservation of the Modern South.”

Their scholarly work has been supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and the American Council for Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, among others. They are also a Junior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography.

For the 2025-2026 academic year, they are the Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of American History.