I am an Assistant Professor in Geography and Latinx and Caribbean Studies. I have long been interested in the intersection of class, race, and gender in Latin American societies, particularly in Brazil, and their resulting geographical patterns of racialized uneven economic geographies. I have been organizing with communities of color inside and outside of academia, over the past twenty years and collaborated in a number of popular education projects.
Broadly speaking, my current research engages co-elaborative work with Black women residents in majority-Black geographies in Rio de Janeiro to map Black community economies, and to understand how they conceive of solidarity economics and enact grassroots urban planning and community-driven development initiatives. I am currently working on my book manuscript titled "City of God(desses): Afro-feminist urban marronage in the face of the Racial Capitalism” that centers women-led community economies around struggles for housing and childcare in the favela City of God, Rio de Janeiro.
I was recently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Black and Latinx Studies in the Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies and the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas in Austin (2019-2021). I hold a MA and PhD in Geography from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), a graduate certificate in Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies (Duke University-UNC), and a BA in Sociology of Ethnic Studies from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Selected Publications: (Also formerly published as Vaz, Priscilla)
Ferreira, P. (2021). Racial capitalism and epistemic injustice: Blindspots in the theory and practice of solidarity economy in brazil. Geoforum, Special Issue Racial Capitalism, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.020
Ferreira, P. (2021).Black feminist geographies that ache and bond [Special issue Solidão]. Women Studies Quarterly (forthcoming Fall 2021).
Ferreira, P (2021). Breathtaking Whirlwind. QT Voices-LBGTQ Studies at the University of Texas. https://sites.utexas.edu/queerandtransvoices/2020/10/breathtaking-whirlwind/
Vaz, P. (2020). Diversidade econômica e geografia negra. Revista da Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores/As Negros/As (ABPN), 12. Special Issue. 389-417 https://www.abpnrevista.org.br/index.php/site/article/view/874
Vaz, P (2020). Policiamentos da caixa de pandora da branquitude. Revista da Iniciativa de Direito à Memória e Justiça Racial. https://dmjracial.com/2020/07/28/policiamentos-da-caixa-de-pandora-da-branquitude/
Courses Taught
Afro-Latinx Geographies (Fall 2021)
Current and Upcoming Collaborative Projects
One of the latest activist-scholarship projects I envisioned and collaborate with is the English for Social Justice Program, an English language learning and Afro-affirming knowledge exchange program that supports Afro-Brazilian artists, activists and scholars in their endeavours to connect their social justice, artistic and scholarly initiatives with people and places worldwide especially across the African Diaspora.
Global Black Geographies: Racial Capitalism and Black Urban Experiences is an international seminar series that will take place in Rio de Janeiro Brazil and New Brunswick/New York City (2022).
This two-part seminar series brings Black Geographies into Urban Studies while simultaneously strengthening the global network of researchers and activists interested in Black geographies studies and activist interventions against the racialized power dynamics that perpetuates devaluation, expropriation, and marginalization of Black lives and majority-Black places. It highlights the need for urban theorists to foreground Black Studies epistemologies in their work, and in so doing, to also draw on the important contributions of social movement participants in our collective knowledge production.
The international seminars will take place in academic and grassroots spaces both in Brazil and the United States. It will make space for a multiplicity of modes of interaction and knowledge production including series conversation circles, round tables, film screenings, artistic presentations, and field visits to places of Black historical importance
See:https://urbanstudiesfoundation.org/funding/grantees/global-black-geographies-racial-capitalism-and-black-urban-experiences/
