Sadly this event has been postponed. We look forward to welcoming Juliana Borges to campus later this year.

Juliana Borges will analyze the way in which Black women have been criminally punished in Brazil, from colonialism to coloniality, and the varied forms of Black resistance that they have led in the face of the punitive State. Based on Black women's resilience and radical political imagination in defense of themselves and their communities, these movements have proved fundamental in building well-being and good living. We will focus particularly on the criminal justice and penitentiary systems which serve as the most explicit tools for maintaining inequalities based on racial hierarchies and the precarity of Black life. Finally, the talk will present an overview of the struggles undertaken today in Brazil by Black women, who are at the forefront of the country's main antiracist movements.

Juliana Borges is currently the Director of Advocacy for the Iniciativa Negra por uma Nova Política sobre Drogas (Black Initiative for a New Drug Policy) and previously served as Deputy Secretary for Women's Policies for the São Paulo city government.  She has published two books, Encarceramento em massa (Mass Incarceration) and Prisões: espelhos de nós (Prisons: Mirrors of Us). She is also a researcher in Anthropology at FESPSP (São Paulo School of Sociology and Politics), and the co-founder of the Inter-American Articulation of Black Women in Criminal Justice. 

This event is made possible by the collaboration between WGS, DUSP, and MIT-Brazil.