Announcing our Fall 2026 Graduate Student Fellow

Joining us this month is our Fall 2026 Graduate Student Fellow, Chanta Shenell Palmer, PhD Student, Language, Literacy, and Culture. Chanta will share her work later in the semester as a part of our CURRENTS lunchtime series.

Chanta’s PhD dissertation, “(Re)fortification in Practice: Care and Collective Wellness Among Black Women in Brazil,” examines how Black women in Brazil sustain collective wellness through community organizing, education, and spiritual practice. Drawing on fieldwork with Geledés, Instituto da Mulher Negra, a Black women's organization based in São Paulo, the study asks how everyday acts of care meet immediate needs while also building capacity for future care. The project introduces (Re)fortification, an original framework describing this recursive process, and traces it through a single-site ethnographic study conducted in partnership with the University of Campinas (UNICAMP).