reelaviolette botts-ward, PhD, is a homegirl, an artist, and a nontraditional community curator from Philadelphia, PA. Currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with the REPAIR Project at UCSF, ree brings radical Black feminist healing arts to healthcare and medical science spaces. As founder of blackwomxnhealing, ree curates exhibitions, courses, healing circles and research for and by Black womxn, and values communal care as a foundational ethic for engaging somatic, ancestral, and spiritual wellness. She remains invested in making her academic work accessible to community audiences, using art, poetry, and digital humanities as tools of translation.

Her first book, mourning my inner[blackgirl]child (Nomadic Press, 2021), uses poetics as praxis to explore embodied trauma, ancestral grief work, and spiritual healing. She has also published articles, book chapters, and creative works with the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, Routledge Press, and the University of Arizona Press, among others. Her work has been featured with platforms like Elle Magazine, NAACP, and The Griot, and supported by the California Black Women’s Health Project, the UC Humanities Research Institute, and the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, among others.

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She received her PhD in African Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, her MA in African American studies from UCLA, and her BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College. She has also taught courses in the African American Studies department at Merritt College and the University of California, Berkeley, and a course called #BlackFeministHealingArts in UCSF’s Medical Anthropology department. For more on ree’s work, visit blackwomxnhealing.com / @blackwomxnhealing / @dr.reelaviolette on instagram. 

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