Class of 2028
(She/Her/Hers)
A.B. Duke Scholar
Hometown: Irving, Texas
Major: Undeclared, but proposing Program II: Holistic Health—Systems, Inequity, and the Human Experience
Hobbies and Interests: Outside the classroom, Grace climbs rocks and refuses to buy fast fashion. Every piece in her wardrobe is either thrifted or sewn by herself—an act of both sustainability and resistance. Sewing and secondhand hunting are as much ritual as hobby, reflecting a larger ethos of intentionality that runs through all her work. Whether in archives, climbing gyms, or the scrap exchange bins, Grace moves through the world with curiosity and care. She has a soft spot for systems, stories, and the slow, strange work of imagining something better.
Why Duke?
Grace Marquez chose Duke to design her own major in Holistic Health, a Program II curriculum that examines how cultural, socioeconomic, biological, and political systems shape health across the human lifespan. Her work sits at the intersection of gender, embodiment, and systemic inequality, blending neuroscience, ethics, policy, and narrative to address questions of access, education, and care.
Growing up, Grace saw firsthand how chronic illness, silence, and stigma often filled the gaps where education and care should have been. Her coursework at Duke—ranging from feminist ethics to documentary storytelling—reflects a commitment to uncovering and challenging the structures that perpetuate health inequity. Her current research explores health belief systems in the rural South, using interviews and visual media to trace how people make meaning out of illness in the absence of formal health literacy.
She came to Duke not just for what it was, but for what it was willing to become: unpredictable, unfinished, and deeply hers.