Priscilla Ferreira

Dr. Priscilla Ferreira is an Afro-Brazilian feminist, abolitionist, and social justice educator. She is also an Assistant Professor of Geography and Latinx & Caribbean at Rutgers University- New Brunswick-USA. Her work and activism focus on Black feminist mutual-aid economies in Brazil, Black co-op movements across the African Diaspora, urban Black geographies, and community-engaged methodologies and scholarship.  

She has been organizing with communities of color inside and outside of academia over the past twenty years and collaborated in several popular education projects internationally.  Dr. Ferreira is founder and the coordinator of the English & Social Justice School, a language justice Black co-op that offers language training, interpretation and translation services for social movements and creates opportunities for international education and political collaboration for/with Black grassroots activist, Black artists and scholars.  

In June 2025, Dr. Ferreira organized the Weaving Diaspora: Black Ecologies Community Immersion Program for scholars and activists in Brazil. The organizations included: The Landless Peasant Movement (The MST in Rio de de Janeiro)),  Terreiro of Camdonblé Oxumare- Bahia, Quilombo Santa Isabel (Rio de de Janeiro), among others.

Publications:

• 2025 Ferreira, P.; & Serafim, Ana Lucia. Cidade de Deusas. Editora Oralituras. Rio de Janeiro.

• 2024 Wright, W., Bledsoe, A., Ferreira, P., Maye, K., Louis, E. "Beyond Geographies of Race." (2024). Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

• Ferreira, P; Santos, R. E. 2023. ‘Methodologies of Black Social Movements’ in Lovell, S. A., Coen, S. E., & Rosenberg, M. W. (Eds.). The Routledge handbook of methodologies in human geography. Taylor & Francis.

• Ferreira, P. (2022). My curls, my crown. In L. Wanzer (Ed.). Trauma, tresses and truth: untangling our hair through personal narratives. Chicago Review Press.

• Ferreira, P. (2021). Encounters in Black Feminist Geographies That Ache and Bond. WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 49(1), 137-160

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• Mcgrann/USF Global Black Geographies Conference Chair- Keynote roundtable- Theorizing Global Black Geographies - Rutgers

• Popular education and the economics of abolition. The Inaugural Jack Quarter Lecturership in Social Economy. [Keynote Address] Jun, 2 2023. The Ontario Institute of Education (OISE). University of Toronto, Canada

• Black Brazilian Consciousness Day Abroad- Teacher's College Columbia University

• 2022 Keynote speaker. Economic marronage: Black solidarity economies confronting racial and epistemic justice. Liviana-Community Economies Conference, Watch here.

Previous Organizations:

• University of Texas- Austin

• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Global Citizenship Experience High School and Educator Institute

Accomplishments:

• 2025-2026 Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Faculty Fellow

• 2024 Antipode Geographies of Justice Institute, Faculty Fellow

• Postdoctoral Fellow in Black Studies and Latino Studies

• Urban Studies Foundation Knowledge Mobilization Award

• Rotary World Peace Fellow

Upcoming Projects:

• Global Black Geographies Network

• Collaborate in building the framework to institute the National Association of Black Cooperators

I am an Afro-Brazilian feminist, abolitionist, and social justice educator. My work and activism focus on Black solidarity economies, Black geographies, and community-engaged pedagogies and scholarship. I have been organizing with communities of color inside and outside of academia over the past twenty years and collaborated in several popular education projects internationally. I am the founder and the coordinator of the English & Social Justice School, a language justice Black co-op that offers language training, interpretation, and translation services for social movements and creates opportunities for international education and political collaboration for/with Black grassroots activist/scholar/artists. I am a board member of Collective Diaspora, a new membership-based organization of Black cooperatives and Black-led co-op support organizations from across the African diaspora.

The convening brought together international scholars, local activists, Rutgers students, graduate students from other institutions, and community organizers including Dr. Monica White, a senior scholar of sustainable community food systems, for a phenomenal and transformative discussion of Black Ecologies, placemaking, and shared struggles for spatial and ecological justice between Mississippi, Rio de Janeiro, Virginia, North Carolina, Louisiana, St. John, and other locations.

The weekend-long convening included an environmental justice tour with the Ironbound Community Corporation, a full and vibrant day of roundtable panels on Black land and foodways, Black waterways, global environmental justice, Black and Indigenous land stories, and a keynote by Dr. White. Participants also engaged with Newark activists and organizers doing environmental and water justice work, visited Black Philadelphia farmers working in food and eco-justice, and met with community organizers working to organize around spatial justice. Finally, participants heard from educators, youth and parents working on environmental justice from the classroom at an autonomous school in Philadelphia.

This field school yielded important discussions and cross-pollination and served as a launching pad for imagining possible future research and community collaborations. It also helped the Black Ecologies Lab gather critical data toward its collective research and understanding of the kinds of experiences that activate African diasporic communities in translation around land, food, and environmental justice. 

Learn more here.