Behind the Scenes

Fernanda Dias (she/her) is a Black Brazilian woman, first-generation college graduate. She was born and raised in the peripheries of Belo Horizonte and Vespasiano, Minas Gerais, respectively. She’s a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Fernanda is an elementary educator by training and has a Master's degrees in Educational Leadership and Educational Policy Studies from the University of Massachusetts. She also holds a Master's degree in Education and Social Inclusion from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). She has a history of student activism for affirmative action in public higher education institutions in Brazil. Her practice as a popular educator has been central to her work in youth education. This critical pedagogy approach has marked her expertise as a Theater of the Oppressed facilitator, with work devolved in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. She is one of the founders of Kilomba Collective, the first Black Brazilian women collective in the United States. She has taught, written about, and researched educational trajectories, critical pedagogy, youth, race/ethnicity, contemporary transnational African diasporas, and race relations and immigration in the United States.