Black Feminist Health Science Studies

The BFHSS Collective co-sponsored the first BFHSS Collaboratory by funding the digital platform (WHOVA) and providing tech support during the event through their relationship with MIT.
Collective members Ugo Edu and Adeola Oni-Orisan, as founding directors, were responsible for the conception, development, and execution of the 1st BFHSS Collaboratory. For more information about future Collaboratory events check out their new website at [website address to be provided on Sept 1].

Please see the call for papers from the 2021 conference below.

General Call for participation in the collaboratory is now closed. For those who attended the BFHSS Symposium, we have opened up a call for lightning talks here.

This 3-day interdisciplinary collective laboratory (collaboratory) endeavors to bring together scholars, creatives, organizers, and activists working to highlight the importance of the incorporation of social justice into the medical sciences. The collaboratory serves as a space for conversation, exchange of ideas, workshopping ideas, designated writing time, community and collaboration building, as well as community care, networking, and capacity building.

Black Feminist Health Science Studies (BFHSS) is an emerging discipline created by interdisciplinary scholars who started their careers as undergraduates studying Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Black women have been one of the most ignored and marginalized groups in the history of social justice and healthcare. It is the hope that breaking down barriers that prevent health care access and equity for Black women will assist in the dismantling of barriers for other marginalized groups.

The hope for this discipline is to be an inclusive one that addresses intersectional issues of race, gender and class. We also hope to demonstrate the necessity for understanding how societal factors prevent healthcare from being accessible as a human right, not a privilege or commodity. Join us for our opening symposium on March 18, 2021, which will serve as an introduction to the May 14-16, 2021 BFHSS Collaboratory.

This first BFHSS Collaboratory will center on the theme of Racial Geographies of Health and Wellness. By centering on this theme, we hope to draw works that are putting BFHSS, geographies, and space in conversation together. We are looking for works exploring how the practices and modes of knowledge production of varying branches of the sciences (health, science, and medicine) continue to shape global, national, local, natural, cultural, and racial landscapes and vice versa. We are interested in works that articulate how a BFHSS lens contributes to new kinds of mappings or seeing and conceptualization of space and place. We look forward to works raising epistemological questions for scientists, health and medical personnel whose policies, practices, and research methodologies could be leveraged towards the dismantling of racist infrastructures. We ask that submissions, particularly workshop submissions, be related to the theme.

Submission topics might include but are not limited to:

· Spacialized racial difference and health precarity;

· Processes of racialization within healthcare systems;

· Historical or ongoing institutions and practices of Black healing, aid, and care;

· Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and/or Africanjujuism;

· Gentrification, displacement, and health;

· Digital media landscapes, health advocacy, and health promotion;

· Spaces of healing, self-care, therapy, and liberatory practices in nature;

· Urban food landscapes;

· Black feminist ecologies and health;

· Intergenerational traditions and knowledge practices around health;

· Affective, sensory, and emotional landscapes of caregiving;

· Race, technology, and algorithms in healthcare;

· Reproductive justice, doulas, and birthwork;

· Racial capitalism, and impacts on health;

· Fiction, creativity, worldmaking;

· Environmental racism, Black indigeneity, and health;

· Abolition, reparations, and health

Session Formats:

a. Talk (15 min): For collaborators looking to present unpublished or published work, performance, or other media form. If accepted, you will be placed on a panel with 2 other talks speaking to similar themes.

b. Conversation (60 min): For collaborators looking to propose a complete panel with 2 to 4 participants. You can also choose to submit something that is more collaborative or creative (we highly encourage!), that veers away from the traditional reading of formal papers. You will be allotted 60 minutes total and we expect that you will leave time for audience interaction or questions.

c. Community Spotlight (15 min): For community members, activists, organizers, artists looking to share more about the work they do in their respective communities. An opportunity to network, dialogue, and spotlight the work. If accepted, you will be placed on a panel with other community spotlights or where appropriate, in a talk on topics relevant to your work.

d. Workshop (60 min): For collaborators looking to workshop a paper/article/etc. in progress on which you would like to receive engaged feedback. By agreeing to participate in the workshop, you will be required to 1. submit the full draft of the paper/article/etc a month in advance of the conference; 2. Agree to read and provide detailed feedback for two other participants.

e. Retreat (varies): For collaborators looking to spend conference time writing in community to complete writing goals (optional).

f. Skillshare (varies): For collaborators looking to share and build knowledge around a skill. Topics of designated breakout sessions will vary and depend on interest and participation.

You may choose to participate in more than one way and we encourage it!

General Call for participation in the collaboratory is now closed. For those who attended the BFHSS Symposium, we have opened up a call for lightning talks here.