About

Early years

Djamila Ribeiro’s intellectual and public trajectory is deeply rooted in formative experiences that articulate critical thinking, political consciousness, collective action, and cultural life. The daughter of Joaquim Ribeiro dos Santos, a dockworker and trade unionist, and Erani Ribeiro dos Santos, a domestic worker, she is the youngest of four children and grew up in an environment shaped both by political commitment and everyday care.

From her father, she learned to play chess and, more importantly, to understand the central role of education, reading, and the formation of political consciousness as tools for social transformation. From her mother, she received the care that sustained the family’s domestic life and, still in childhood, at the age of eight, she was initiated into Candomblé—an experience that would become central to her ethical, spiritual, and intellectual formation.

Djamila completed her secondary education at the Colégio Moderno dos Estivadores and, from an early age, attended English language courses, expanding her access to cultural and intellectual repertoires that would later inform her academic and essayistic work.

While still young, in the city of Santos (São Paulo), Djamila had a decisive encounter with Black women writers and with the tradition of Brazilian Black feminism through her involvement, beginning in 1999, with the Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra de Santos—a historic space for political organization, knowledge production, and cultural formation, then led by the poet and activist Dona Alzira Rufino.

In the 2000s, Djamila worked as a teacher within Educafro’s network of popular preparatory courses, supporting the education of young people from peripheral communities in the Baixada Santista region and deepening her engagement with popular education. In 2008, at the age of 27, she enrolled in the Philosophy undergraduate program at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), marking the beginning of an academic trajectory that, from the outset, has been organically intertwined with her activist, pedagogical, and intellectual experience, consistently guided by the democratization of access to knowledge.

Djamila completed her undergraduate degree and, in 2015, earned a Master’s degree in Political Philosophy. The following year, in 2016, she assumed the position of Deputy Secretary for Human Rights for the city of São Paulo, a role she held until the end of that municipal administration, participating in the design and implementation of public policies aimed at the promotion of rights and the reduction of inequalities.

In November 2017, she launched in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro the book O que é Lugar de Fala?—later retitled Lugar de Fala. The book launches drew thousands of people in their very first events. In Rio de Janeiro, more than three thousand attendees filled the venue, requiring the temporary closure of Moraes e Vale Street due to the size of the crowd. In Minas Gerais, during the book’s third public presentation at Sesc Palladium in Belo Horizonte, Djamila set an attendance record for the auditorium—one that remains unsurpassed to this day.

From this milestone onward, the present memorial details the consolidation of her trajectory as a public intellectual, author, professor, editor, and designer of cultural, educational, and institutional projects with national and international reach.

International work

During her undergraduate studies, Djamila presented papers at conferences organized by the Simone de Beauvoir Society, dedicated to the thought of the French philosopher. She delivered lectures at two conferences in the United States: in Oregon in 2011 and, as a master’s student, in St. Louis in 2014.

Following the publication of her works in Brazil, she has delivered lectures and keynote addresses at dozens of universities around the world, including Berkeley, Duke, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale in the United States; King’s College London, the London School of Economics, and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom; French universities such as Lyon 3, Toulouse, and Rennes 2; and European institutions including Aarhus, Oslo, and Amsterdam, among others.

In 2018, she was selected for the Angela Davis Visiting Chair at Goethe University (Germany), where she spent a week in academic exchanges with faculty members and teaching students at the institution. In 2019, she was a visiting researcher at Maxcy College at the invitation of the University of South Carolina, and in 2021 she served as a visiting researcher at the University of Mainz (Germany). She has also participated in major international book fairs such as Frankfurt, Berlin, Edinburgh, Nairobi, Bogotá, Brussels, and Arequipa, among others. Djamila has delivered talks at institutions such as UNESCO, the World Bank, and foreign national parliaments.

In 2023, she was a keynote speaker at the United Nations General Assembly on the International Day of Remembrance of the Abolition of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, with the lecture “Fighting the Legacy of Slavery and Racism through Transformative Education.” In the same year, during her participation in the Gulbenkian Summer Gardens program, she set an attendance record, with additional rooms opened and audience members required to watch from the gardens.

Regarding official agendas, in October 2017 she spent a week in Norway at the invitation of the Norwegian government, engaging in dialogue around public policies. In 2018, at the invitation of the South African Tourism Board, she spent a week in the country following the Nelson Mandela Route and, in the same year, was recognized by the United Nations through the Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) award. In March 2019, she was selected for the French government’s “Personalities of Tomorrow” program, which chooses one participant per country for a week of official engagements.

In 2019, she was named by the BBC as one of the 100 Most Influential Women in the World, and later that year she was awarded the Prince Claus Award, granted by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in recognition of her work in democratizing access to reading and her role as a public intellectual.

In 2020, she participated in a literary residency at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB), during which she produced an article under the supervision of Natasha Kelly for a publication released in multiple languages. In 2021, she delivered an address at the Bundestag at the invitation of Claudia Roth, then Vice President of the German Parliament. In 2023, she met in São Paulo with the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, and earlier that same year, in Brasília, she was awarded the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights in a ceremony attended by German Minister of State Tobias Lindner and French Delegate Minister Olivier Becht.

She participated as a keynote guest at the Verbier Art Summit (Switzerland) in 2020. In 2021, she was part of the program of the Gwangju Biennale (South Korea), contributing an essay to the exhibition catalogue, and was also the honored writer at the Lima Book Fair (Peru). In the same year, she became the first Brazilian recipient of the BET Awards in the Global Good category, granted by the African American community, in recognition of the social impact of her work.

Her international media presence includes magazine covers and interviews in outlets such as Portugal’s Expresso; Germany’s taz; Italy’s L’Espresso, Il Manifesto, and Corriere della Sera; the Netherlands’ NRC; France’s Libération; the United Kingdom’s The Guardian; and the United States’ The New York Times, as well as international news agencies such as Reuters and AFP. She has appeared on programs and interviews on RTP, RTP África, CGTN, BBC, France 24, TV5 Monde, and Al Jazeera. During the second half of 2021, she authored a monthly column for the German magazine Der Spiegel and published opinion pieces in newspapers such as El País (Argentina) and Il Manifesto.
At the end of 2023, she was in Washington, D.C., as an honoree at the Inter-American Dialogue Gala, held at the Organization of American States (OAS).

Books published

The English-language edition of Djamila Ribeiro is Where We Stand (2024), published by Yale University Press. The book is the translation of her landmark Brazilian work Lugar de Fala (Place of Speech / Standpoint), accompanied by a new introduction written specifically for an Anglophone audience. With a foreword by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, it presents central concepts of Ribeiro’s thought—such as standpoint, intersectionality, and Black feminism—situating Black diasporic intellectual production within global debates on democracy, race, and gender.

Beyond Lugar de Fala, Ribeiro has published several influential works in Brazilian Portuguese. Quem Tem Medo do Feminismo Negro? (Who’s Afraid of Black Feminism?, 2018) brings together essays originally written for her newspaper columns, addressing racism, sexism, and the public distortions surrounding Black feminism in Brazil. In 2019, she released Pequeno Manual Antirracista (Small Anti-Racist Handbook), her most widely impactful book, composed of concise chapters that offer ethical and practical reflections on anti-racist action in everyday life.

In 2021, she published Cartas para Minha Avó (Letters to My Grandmother), a memoir written as a series of letters to her grandmother, reflecting on ancestry, memory, and personal formation. Her transnational intellectual engagement is further expressed in Diálogos Transatlânticos (Transatlantic Dialogues, 2020), a book of conversations with philosopher Nadia Yala Kisukidi on Black feminist thought and diaspora. Most recently, Travessias (Crossings, 2025), published in Portugal, gathers a curated selection of her newspaper columns reflecting on politics, culture, and democracy during a decisive period in contemporary Brazil. Her works have been translated into multiple languages, expanding the international reach and impact of her scholarship.

Impact in Brazil

Her books are widely adopted in undergraduate and graduate course bibliographies throughout Brazil. A bibliometric survey conducted by Brenno Tardelli and Brenda Vieira, aimed at measuring the academic impact of Lugar de Fala, identified more than one thousand references to the work in master’s dissertations and doctoral theses produced in the country.

Beyond academic circulation, her works are studied in classrooms, pedagogical materials, language schools, and selection processes, appearing in university entrance examinations at institutions such as the University of São Paulo (USP) and the University of Campinas (Unicamp), as well as forming part of the mandatory philosophy bibliography at the Federal University of Paraná. Her intellectual trajectory and thought are the subject of student research on a daily basis across different regions of Brazil, serving as a reference for multiple generations.

Her popular reach is also evident at literary fairs and events throughout the country, where autograph sessions draw lines of thousands of readers in cities such as Salvador, Belém, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Fortaleza, Teresina, Rio Branco, Curitiba, Natal, Bonito, Ribeirão Preto, Bauru, and Palmas, among many others. In each city, her events mobilize local media and are attended by public authorities.

In her hometown, Djamila is listed among the city’s distinguished figures by the municipal government of Santos. In 2023, she received the city’s highest honor, the Brás Cubas Medal.

In 2024, she was the honored author of FLISOL (Festa Literária da Morada do Sol), in Araraquara, curated by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão. In 2025, she was the honored author of the Ribeirão Preto International Book Fair, on which occasion she was also granted honorary citizenship of Ribeirão Preto. In addition, she was the featured author of the educational project Combinando Palavras, through which students from public schools in Ribeirão Preto presented works inspired by her books. More than two thousand students from the region participated in the project.

Beyond her own authored works, Djamila has also played a significant role in shaping the circulation of foundational texts in Brazil through her prefaces. Among these is the preface to Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis, whose translation and publication in Brazil were made possible following direct contact initiated by Djamila in 2015, resulting in the Brazilian edition released in 2016. She has also written highly influential prefaces, such as for the exhibition catalogue of Grada Kilomba at the Pinacoteca of São Paulo, dedicated to an anticolonial re-reading of Greek myths.

Djamila also authored the preface to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (in an edition that also includes a preface by Oprah Winfrey), as well as the preface to The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, an invitation that stemmed from her curatorship of the TAG Livros reading club.

Over the years, she has participated in international dialogues and encounters with intellectuals and leaders such as Alice Walker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Patricia Hill Collins, Ibram X. Kendi, Achille Mbembe, Ruby Bridges, Kalaf Epalanga, Saidiya Hartman, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, among others. In 2022, at the Rio Book Fair (Salão Carioca do Livro), she moderated Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s keynote lecture at a sold-out Maracanãzinho arena, with tickets selling out within minutes—an encounter that symbolizes the public, affective, and transnational dimension of her intellectual work. In 2024, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote the foreword to Where We Stand, the English-language edition of Lugar de Fala published by Yale University Press.

Djamila Ribeiro and the Plural Feminisms Collection

As coordinator of the Feminismos Plurais Collection, Djamila Ribeiro has led, over the past years, one of the most significant transformations in contemporary Brazilian publishing. By publishing non-fiction works written by Black authors on critical themes such as racism, feminism, democracy, and knowledge production—using accessible language, didactic formats, and affordable pricing—the collection has dismantled long-standing barriers to reading and public debate. Distributed through cultural launches, schools, universities, and community events, the books—small in format yet central in impact—became a phenomenon of circulation, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold, projecting Brazilian authors and ideas beyond national borders.

Between 2019 and 2025, the Feminismos Plurais Collection was the result of a partnership between Djamila Ribeiro and Editora Jandaíra, under the leadership of publisher Lizandra Magon. During this period, fourteen titles were published, including six re-editions and eight original works. This phase of the collection includes: Lugar de Fala (Djamila Ribeiro); Encarceramento em Massa (Mass Incarceration, Juliana Borges); Empoderamento (Empowerment, Joice Berth); Racismo Estrutural (Structural Racism, Silvio Almeida); Interseccionalidade (Intersectionality, Carla Akotirene); Racismo Recreativo (Recreational Racism, Adilson Moreira); Apropriação Cultural (Cultural Appropriation, Rodney William); Intolerância Religiosa (Religious Intolerance, Sidnei Barreto); Colorismo (Colorism, Alessandra Devulsky); Transfeminismo (Transfeminism, Letícia Nascimento); Trabalho Doméstico (Domestic Work, Juliana Teixeira); Discurso de Ódio nas Redes Sociais (Hate Speech on Social Media, Luiz Valério Trindade); Cotas Raciais (Racial Quotas, Lívia Sant’Anna Vaz); and Lesbiandade (Lesbian Identity, Deise Fatumma).

The collection established itself as a central agent in the democratization of access to critical thought in Brazil and repositioned the axis of intellectual legitimacy within the publishing market, opening pathways for other Black voices to be published, read, and recognized on a national scale. In 2026, the Feminismos Plurais Collection and Lugar de Fala began to be published by the Record Publishing Group, through the Rosa dos Tempos imprint, under the editorship of Lívia Vianna. In this new phase, Lugar de Fala will be relaunched in an expanded edition, with publication scheduled for March 2026, reaffirming its centrality in Brazilian public debate and the editorial vitality of the work nearly a decade after its original release.

Editora Record has also announced plans to reissue most titles in the collection, as well as to publish new original works, including Sexual and Reproductive Rights (Marjorie Chaves), Mental Health (Ana Luísa Coelho), and Transmasculinities (Gabriel Romão).

The transformations promoted by Djamila Ribeiro’s editorial work and by the Feminismos Plurais Collection have already become objects of academic and historical reflection. The hundreds of thousands of copies sold do not merely represent commercial success; they signal a structural shift in Brazilian literary culture, particularly with regard to the circulation of ideas produced by Black authors.

According to research conducted by scholar Regina Dalcastagnè (University of Brasília), between 1964 and 2014 only approximately 10% of books published by major Brazilian publishing houses were written by Black authors. The emergence and consolidation of the Feminismos Plurais Collection are directly situated within the movement to break with this historical pattern, contributing to the expansion of Black authors’ presence in the national publishing market.

At the international level, Djamila’s editorial work — as both author and coordinator — has crossed the Atlantic and established strong roots within the European context. Through partnerships with publishers in France, Italy, and Spain, and with financial support provided by Djamila herself to enable authors’ travel and participation in literary tours, works from the collection have been translated and published in multiple languages.

In France, Éditions Anacaona has published translations of works by Joice Berth, Adilson Moreira, Rodney William, Alessandra Devulsky, Letícia Nascimento, Deise Fatumma, and Lívia Sant’Anna Vaz. In Spanish, a translation of Encarceramento em Massa by Juliana Borges has been published. In Italy, through Capovolte Edizioni, translations of Interseccionalidade by Carla Akotirene and Discurso de Ódio nas Redes Sociais by Luiz Valério Trindade have been released, the latter featuring an adaptation specifically developed for the Italian public debate.

As part of the editorial partnership with Paula Anacaona, between 2019 and early 2026 the Feminismos Plurais Collection financed book tours in France and Belgium for authors in the collection, covering travel, accommodation, and circulation costs. On several occasions, this work also involved institutional and brand partnerships—such as Accor and Air France—further expanding the international presence of Black Brazilian authors.

International Publications (by countries)

France

France was the first country to translate and publish the work of Djamila Ribeiro, through Éditions Anacaona, a publishing house founded and directed by Paula Anacaona. Djamila and Anacaona established a solid and innovative working partnership. Through book tours and visits to France and Brussels (Belgium) for launch events, more than 15,000 copies of her books have been sold.
In 2025, Djamila opened the Saint-Malo Literary Festival—the largest literary festival in France—before an audience of over 1,200 people. Over the years, she has also appeared in Lyon, Toulouse, Montpellier, Lille, Rennes, and Marseille.
The following titles have been published in French: La place de la parole noire (Lugar de Fala), Chroniques sur le féminisme noir (Quem Tem Medo do Feminismo Negro?), Petit manuel antiraciste et féministe (Pequeno Manual Antirracista), and Ta magie m’a menée jusqu’ici – Lettres à ma grand-mère (Cartas para Minha Avó). Djamila has also contributed an essay on motherhood and Candomblé to Gagner le monde (Éditions La Fabrique), a collection bringing together texts by feminists from different countries and translated into several languages.
Djamila has undertaken three book tours in France, participating in debates, launches, and academic encounters alongside intellectuals such as Françoise Vergès, Maboula Soumahoro, Mame-Fatou Niang, and Aurélie Knüfer, as well as Nadia Yala Kisukidi, with whom she published Dialogue transatlantique: perspectives de la pensée féministe noire et des diasporas africaines, available exclusively in France.

United States

Djamila Ribeiro’s first writings in English appeared in 2016, when she published the essay “Black Feminism for a New Civilizatory Framework” on the Conectas Human Rights website. For many years, during events in the United States, Djamila signed printed translations of this and other texts, often reproduced on simple photocopied pages.

This situation persisted until 2024, when, following a feature in The New York Times that identified Djamila as one of the leading figures of Brazil’s literary transformation, the rights to Lugar de Fala were acquired by Yale University Press. The book was republished as Where We Stand, including a revised and adapted version for Anglophone audiences, an original introduction addressing U.S. readers directly, and a foreword by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Further information on the U.S. launch tour of Where We Stand in the second half of 2024—initiated with a debate organized by Yale University departments and marking the book’s entry into the North American academic and intellectual circuit—is detailed in the section dedicated to Djamila’s period as a visiting professor at New York University.

In 2025, Djamila became the first Brazilian invited to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as a visiting professor in the program honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., becoming the first Brazilian in history to hold this position.

Portugal

In 2024, Editorial Caminho published the first translation of a work by Djamila Ribeiro into European Portuguese, a landmark editorial project led by Zeferino Coelho. One year earlier, Djamila had been in Portugal for the Coimbra Book Fair and the Jardins de Verão Gulbenkian, where her participation broke historic attendance records, as previously noted.

In 2024, with Cartas para Minha Avó already published in the country, Djamila once again filled the Lisbon Book Fair. In 2025, Editorial Caminho announced the publication of Travessias, a collection of essays originally published in her Folha de S.Paulo column, featuring an original introduction written specifically for the Portuguese edition.

Italy

In Italy, Djamila Ribeiro’s works have been published by Capovolte Edizioni under the editorial coordination of Ilaria Leccardi since 2020. Titles released include Il luogo della parola (Lugar de Fala), Piccolo manuale antirazzista e femminista (Pequeno Manual Antirracista), and Lettere a mia nonna (Cartas para Minha Avó).

Djamila undertook two book tours in the country, visiting Milan, Bologna, Naples, and Florence. In Rome, the Municipal Library could not accommodate the number of attendees, and half of the audience watched from outside, through the windows. She also participated in major literary events such as the Turin International Book Fair and engaged in public debates at universities, accompanied by intellectuals and moderators including Igiaba Scego, Johanne Affricot, Alessia Di Eugenio, and Nicola Biasio.

Mexico

In 2023, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in partnership with the imprint Tumbalacasa, published the Spanish translation of Lugar de Fala under the title Lugar de Enunciación, expanding the book’s circulation within the Latin American academic context.

Djamila has visited Mexico on three occasions. On her first visit, while in Mexico City as a guest speaker at a UNESCO conference, she launched the Spanish edition of Quem Tem Medo do Feminismo Negro?, published by the Chilean press Libros de la Mujer Rota, with moderation by feminist scholar Junko Ogata. The event was independently organized, with support from the Prince Claus Fund and the initiative What Design Can Do?

On her second professional visit, she returned at the invitation of UNAM as a keynote speaker at the 30th International Colloquium on Gender Studies, moderated by Aleida Violeta Vázquez. On her third visit, she participated as a guest at the Guadalajara International Book Fair.

Argentina

In 2024, Djamila held events in Buenos Aires following the Spanish-language publication of Pequeño Manual Antirracista and Cartas para mi abuela, released by the Mandacaru imprint in partnership with Tinta Limón, under the editorship of Lucía Tennina. During the tour, she was invited for an exclusive launch event at MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) and was also the main guest at the Feria de Editores (FED).

In 2025, following contact initiated by her publishers, she was invited to participate in the Guadalajara International Book Fair, further consolidating her presence within the Latin American editorial and intellectual circuit.

South Africa

In 2025, Djamila was invited to deliver a public lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) in Johannesburg, with the support of the Brazilian Embassy in Pretoria.

Based on research conducted with publishers, cultural institutions, and diplomatic representations, this event is considered the first book launch by a Brazilian woman writer in the South African editorial market, marking a historic moment in the circulation of Brazilian intellectual production in the South African context.

Germany

In 2026, the German translation of Pequeno Manual Antirracista is scheduled to be published by the press W_orten & Meer. Between 2020 and 2024, Lugar de Fala was published by Editions Assemblage, featuring an original foreword by Grada Kilomba. Over the years, Djamila has visited Germany on multiple occasions, including twice as a guest at the Frankfurt Book Fair and one as Guest professor at Angela Davis Chair at Goëthe University (Frankfurt).

Colombia

In 2021, Djamila Ribeiro was a featured guest at the Hay Festival Cartagena, where she shared a panel with Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. In 2023, she was an invited author at FILBo, the Bogotá International Book Fair. On both occasions, her book launches were sold out, and she was interviewed by major national newspapers and television networks, including El Tiempo, which ran the headline “Djamila Ribeiro: una mujer incómoda” (“Djamila Ribeiro: an Uncomfortable Woman”).

Spain

In 2018, Djamila published her first academic article on Lugar de Fala in a journal of the Autonomous University of Madrid. Since 2024, the publishing house Txalaparta has released Fue tu magia la que me trajo hasta aquí, the Spanish translation of Cartas para Minha Avó. Between 2018 and 2022, Lugar de Enunciación—the first Spanish translation of Lugar de Fala—was published by the now-defunct Ediciones Ambulantes.

India

In 2020, Djamila acquired the publication rights to Dalit Feminism, organized by Sunaina Arya and Aakash Singh Rathore. The book brings together essays by feminist scholars who formulate theory from Dalit perspectives. The translation was carried out by a team of academics from the Faculty of Letters at the University of São Paulo and will be the first volume in Brazil to compile Dalit feminist texts. The publication also inaugurates the Global South Feminisms Collection, coordinated by Djamila at Record Publishing Group beginning in 2026.

Kenya

In 2023, Djamila was the main guest at the Macondo Festival. In 2024, she participated in the Nairobi Book Fair.

Peru

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Djamila was an honored author at the Lima Book Fair, alongside poet Nélida Piñon. In 2024, she returned to Peru as a guest of the Hay Festival Arequipa.

United Kingdom

In addition to Where We Stand being published by Yale University Press UK, Djamila’s literary trajectory in the United Kingdom began in 2018, when she was one of 51 authors from 25 different countries invited by the Edinburgh International Book Festival to contribute to The Freedom Papers, for which she wrote the essay “Freedom Is a Collective Conscience Project.” She was the first Brazilian in the history of the festival to participate.

In 2019, Djamila published the essay “Considerations on Amefricanity”—a political and cultural concept developed by Lélia González—in the collective volume Women Writers’ Handbook, edited by Aurora Metro Books and published in 2020. She also participated in an interview for the book Hairvolution, released by the same publisher in 2022.
In 2025, Djamila became the first Brazilian in history to deliver the prestigious Taylor Lecture at the University of Oxford, an event described by the university’s magazine Oxford Polyglot as the highlight of the year.

Corporate work

Since 2017, Djamila has been a prominent presence at business congresses and professional associations. Public recognition of her work—along with her credibility and didactic approach—was quickly perceived by brands interested in strengthening their diversity policies and teams.

In 2020, at the request of the Brazilian Olympic Committee, she designed the course “Esporte antirracista: todo mundo sai ganhando” (“Antiracist Sport: Everyone Wins”), directed at the Brazilian Olympic delegation for the Tokyo Games. The course was mandatory for athletes, technical staff, and confederation leadership. The initiative received support from UNESCO and was later exported to Olympic delegations in other countries.

Djamila coordinates consulting projects with large companies, involving products and institutional strategies, and, in partnership with law firms, participates in ESG teams assessing diversity within organizations. In 2021, she joined L’Oréal’s international diversity board in Paris, a role she held until 2023.

In 2022, at YouTube’s invitation, she produced—supported by the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji)—the course “Jornalismo Contra-Hegemônico: reflexões para um novo presente” (“Counter-Hegemonic Journalism: Reflections for a New Present”), based on a course she taught at PUC-SP and PUC-RS. In just one month, the course accumulated more than 3,000 hours of viewing and was adopted in undergraduate Communication programs.

Over the course of her trajectory, she has carried out targeted advertising campaigns and brand initiatives. At the end of 2018, she worked on a consultancy and campaign for Avon. In 2019, at The Body Shop’s invitation, she traveled to Tamale (Ghana) to visit communities producing shea butter. In 2021, she launched an exclusive lipstick line with the brand Quem disse Berenice?. Part of her fee was donated to Mulheres da Luz, an organization supporting women in prostitution in São Paulo, and to Coletivo Neusa Santos, which works to support Black students’ retention in graduate programs at PUC.

Between 2020 and 2025, she served as Johnnie Walker’s ambassador in Brazil, participating in the conception, design, and public leadership of institutional and advertising campaigns. Within this partnership, in 2025 the company supported the Pina Ball, the Pinacoteca of São Paulo’s gala chaired by Djamila, accompanied by a widely resonant institutional campaign. During the same period, Djamila developed and led campaign scripts, including “As mulheres negras seguem marchando” (“Black Women Keep Marching”), featuring writers Carla Akotirene and Kiusam de Oliveira, produced with the approval of Lélia González’s family.

In 2023, she co-created and starred in the national campaign for the new Chevrolet Tracker, encouraging women to obtain driver’s licenses. More than 300,000 women registered for the campaign across the country.

Between 2023 and 2025, she developed initiatives for the Rio Open, including the creation, recording, and narration of institutional videos, as well as lectures for the event’s organization.

Voluntary Board Service and Social Action

In 2024, Djamila Ribeiro began serving, on a voluntary basis, on a series of boards. In June, she was elected to a seat on the Board of Trustees of the Padre Anchieta Foundation, which oversees TV Cultura. In July, she joined the Board of Directors of the Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo, and in August she was announced as a member of the University of São Paulo (USP) Endowment Fund Council.

In 2025, she assumed the presidency of the Committee for the Pinacoteca of São Paulo’s 120th Anniversary Ball, an institutional celebration and cultural mobilization event. That same year, she authored the afterword for the Pinacoteca’s 120th anniversary commemorative book, reflecting on memory, heritage, cultural democracy, and the challenges of expanding access to the arts in Brazil. Since 2025, she has also served as a sustaining patron of the Pinacoteca. Her committee presidency followed an invitation from Jochen Volz (general and artistic director), Marília Gessa (fundraising director), and Cláudio Sonder (board chair).

In the social field, her book donations have surpassed tens of thousands of copies, distributed to libraries, public schools, reading clubs, popular preparatory courses, prison units, and through large-scale shipments. At each book launch, Djamila typically donates at least 100 copies and promotes additional solidarity actions. In 2019, she donated 500 books to communities and libraries across the nine states of Brazil’s Legal Amazon, in partnership with the Tide Setúbal Foundation. That same year, 1,000 books were donated to settlements linked to the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST).

In 2021, during an appearance on the television program Hora do Faro, Djamila announced the donation of 1,000 books to Majori Silva, a young woman who built, with her own hands, the Lugar de Fala Library, named in homage to Djamila, in a peripheral community of Campinas (São Paulo). The books were distributed across a network of university preparatory courses serving low-income students. During the COVID-19 crisis, in partnership with Lola Cosmetics, she coordinated efforts that resulted in the donation of 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer to quilombola communities in the Região dos Lagos (Rio de Janeiro).

As an activist, she has long worked as an educator in preparatory programs serving Black youth. In 2016, she served as Deputy Secretary for Human Rights of São Paulo’s municipal government under Mayor Fernando Haddad. She later provided training for the Feminist School of Heliópolis and participated in professional development courses for prosecutors, judges, and other actors within Brazil’s justice system. In 2025, she visited a juvenile detention facility in Vitória (Espírito Santo), where incarcerated adolescents were reading her work in a group.

She currently serves as an educator for the Promotoras Legais Populares (PLPs), an initiative training women leaders in the outskirts of the state of São Paulo, and she delivers talks and participates in events in peripheral communities across different regions of Brazil.

In 2021, she led a lawsuit against Twitter, grounded in research indicating Black women as the primary targets of hate speech, denouncing the platform’s economic exploitation of racism and misogyny. That same year, at the invitation of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), she led a national campaign combating disinformation about the electoral process and the functioning of Brazil’s electronic voting system, without compensation.

Djamila Ribeiro in US

In August 2024, Djamila Ribeiro lived in New York, where she taught for one semester at New York University as a visiting professor holding the Andrés Bello Chair, a professorship dedicated to critical reflection on democracy, knowledge production, and Global South thought. The course was offered to master’s and doctoral students and integrated teaching, research, and public programming.

Over the semester, she organized four public events, bringing together five guests whose trajectories are directly connected to her intellectual and political field: Ibram X. Kendi, Alessandra Devulsky, Selma Dealdina, Linda Alcoff, and Nadia Yala Kisukidi.

In parallel with her teaching, she undertook a U.S. launch tour for Where We Stand—the English-language edition of Lugar de Fala published by Yale University Press—across several cities. Djamila was accompanied by Nicole Gullane and Liz Dórea, director and photographer of the documentary that has been recording moments of her trajectory since 2024.

The tour began at Yale University and included Rutgers University, the University of Georgia, Spelman College, UCLA, San Diego State University, and Harvard University. During this period, she participated in the Brooklyn Book Festival on a panel alongside Saidiya Hartman, Edwidge Danticat, and Dionne Brand, and also attended the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico.

In Washington, D.C., the launch event took place at the renowned bookstore Politics and Prose, opened by the Brazilian Ambassador to the United States, Maria Viotti. All copies provided by the publisher were sold. In New York, she participated in a launch evening at Brazil’s Consulate General, gathering members of the Brazilian community living in the city.

Her book was covered by outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and the work became available at the United Nations Bookshop in New York, where Djamila held a book event for diplomats. At the end of her residence in the city, she published an academic article in Women’s Studies Quarterly on motherhood through a reading of the Yabás, female orixás.

Djamila was invited to join the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her candidacy was endorsed by three distinct departments of the university—an uncommon outcome in this type of process—and was approved unanimously. In August 2025, Djamila moved to Cambridge, where she currently resides, dedicating herself to teaching at the institution.

In September 2025, during her first weeks in Cambridge, Djamila learned that the Service95 Book Club, a literary initiative by singer Dua Lipa, recommended Where We Stand, describing Djamila as a key figure in popularizing Black feminism in Brazil.

Now, in 2026, Djamila is preparing to teach the course Feminisms of the Global South at MIT starting in February. On March 8, she is confirmed as a keynote speaker at the Women Unite! Conference, promoted by the City of Amsterdam. After appearing on the “Women in War” panel, Djamila will join a conversation with Nigerian writer OluTimehin Kukoyi and Ukrainian lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk, Nobel Peace Prize laureate (2022).

Original publication of the memorial: February 28, 2023
Last updated: January 22, 2026

DJAMILA RIBEIRO’S STAFF AND PRODUCTION TEAM