About me
Brianna Simmons (she/her/hers) is a researcher, educator, bridgeworker, bodywork practitioner, health archivist, and Assistant Professor of Black Studies at San Diego City College.
RESEARCH & TEACHING INTERESTS​
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Antiblackness, Blackness, Valuation, Theories of the Human, the Social & Death
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(Black) Health and Wellbeing, Reproduction, Gender, and Mothering
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Black Geographies and the Black Diaspora
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Political Theory and Black Invention
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Health Archivism, Black Feminisms/Ecocriticism, Planetary Health, and Herbalism
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Human Rights and Global Health Technologies
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Ethnographic and Research ethics, community-based problem solving, Geographical Information Systems, Digital Humanities, and Participatory Action Research
EDUCATION
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2024 Doctor of Philosophy in Medical Anthropology – University of California, Riverside
2019 Masters of Arts in Anthropology – University of California, Riverside
2017 Bachelor of Arts in Sociology - University of California, Riverside
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RESEARCH POSITIONS
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2025 Research and Medical Education Consultant, Abolition Medicine Initiative, University of California, Irvine
​2023 Research Assistant and Data Analyst, Opioid Substance Use and Imaginative Counter-Geographies in the Inland Empire
Contributed a framework of geography based in Black ways of knowing. Conducted data analysis on quantitative R- coded surveys, and qualitative interviews to unveil the antiblack unthought of public policy.
​2020-2022 Research Consultant and Data Analyst, The Antiblackness of Hydrologic Systems in Black Cemeteries in Durham, North Carolina. Department of Environmental Science, Duke University
Designed a research study that bridged intergenerational oral histories of Black community members in Durham with a toxicological study of the molecular contamination of water systems underneath racially segregated cemeteries and neighborhoods in Durham, North Carolina.
Research Assistant and Data Analyst, Police Brutality Against Female Sex Workers in Kisumu, Kenya (NIH Funded)
Conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative analysis. (Winter’20)
Work led to a published manuscript in Social Science and Medicine, and transnational dissemination events.
2019 Research Assistant, Social Networks Study and Qualitative Data Analysis Training, Kisumu and Eldoret, Kenya Conducted extensive data collection, qualitative and quantitative analysis to inform scientific publications, and research workshops with collaborators throughout East Africa.​
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PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS
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​2025 Lecturer, Department of Africana Studies, San Diego State University
2024-present Assistant Professor, Department of Black Studies, San Diego City College
Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside
2022 Communications Coordinator, The Collaboratory for Black Feminist Health
2019–2023 Instructor, Research Consultant and Data Analyst Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside
GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, OTHER FUNDING
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2024 Finalist, University of California Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship
2023 Center for Ideas and Society, Graduate Research Grant, $1275
2023 Sylvia Broadbent Memorial Fellowship, $750
2020 Henry and Willie Lee Moses Engaged Anthropology Grant, $1000
Center for Ideas and Society, $800
2019 Center for Ideas and Society Academic Book Club Grant, $300
2018 Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship, $10,000
Awards
2024 Health, Humanities and Disability Justice, $1000 – to support dissertation research about global antiblackness, black maternal-fetal healthcare financing, and disability justice
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2023 Rudolf Virchow Award, Professional Category for Learning from women who trade sex in Kenya about the antiblackness of Global Health, Society for Medical Anthropology – Critical Anthropology for Global Health Interest Group at the American Anthropological Association
SERVICE & VOLUNTEERING
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2025 District Liaison for Black Student Success, San Diego Community College District
2024 Mentor, Black Studies Honors Students, San Diego City College
Ethnic Studies Consortium and Learning Committee, San Diego City College
2024-2023 Peer Research Mentor, Lumiere Education and Research
2022-2020 Supporting Performer, Menino 111 a lecture performance about antiblackness organized by Aline Serzedello Vilaca Sponsored by the Center for Ideas and Society, Decolonizing Humanism (?), Asian Pacific Student Programs, Chicano Student Programs, Department of Black Study, and Latino and Latin American Research Center (Oct ’22)
Founder, Editor and Author of (Never) Meant to Survive, an Independent Newsletter
Co-Organizer and Discussant, Teach-In Webinar by Blackness Unbound (Nov ’20)
Panelist, Abolitionist Organizing and the University by MALIKAH (Nov ’20)
Co-Organizer and Discussant, Antiblackness, the University and Policing: A Cops Off Campus Teach-In (Oct ’20)
Co-Organizer, Volunteer Political Education and Mutual Aid Coordinator, Rethink Public Safety Coalition (RTPS) (Jun
2019 Panelist, African Student Programs, Black Student Union Welcome Week (Sept ’19)
2015- 2016 Research and Campaign Coordinator for Hunger and Homelessness among UC Riverside students, California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG)
MEMBERSHIPS (*forthcoming)
2023- present Black Feminist Healing Arts Lab
American Anthropological Association
Association of Black Anthropologists
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2021-present Black Women’s Studies Association
2019-2022 Society for Applied Anthropology
2019-2021 National Women’s Studies Association
American Anthropological Association
PUBLICATIONS (*forthcoming)
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2023 Fieldworking While Black: On the Plantocratic nature of Anthropology, Thinking Gender UCLA e-scholarship repository
Mburia-Mwalili A, Wagner KD, Kwobah EK, Atwoli L, Aluda M, et al. (2023) Social support and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic among a cohort of people living with HIV (PLWH) in Western Kenya. PLOS Global Public Health 3(2): e0000778. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000778
2022 Brianna Simmons, Jennifer L. Syvertsen, Learning from women who trade sex in Kenya about the antiblackness of global health, Social Science & Medicine,2022, 115246, ISSN 0277-9536,
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (*forthcoming)
2025 Installation, Geometries of Becoming // The Crossing, Black Feminist Healing Arts Lab, Oakland, California
*Paper, Geometries of Becoming, Collaboratory for Black Feminist Health and Healing
*Workshop, Co-building a Physiopolitical Compass contend with Antiblackness, Collaboratory for Black Feminist Health and Healing
*Panel, Challenging Antiblackness in Anthropology: Experimenting with Antianthropologies for Alternative Futures, Association for Black Anthropologists
2024 Paper, Black Invention and the Onto-politics of Mothering while Black, Co-Panelist on Mothership Connection, Black Diasporic Approaches to Freedom and Community Health, National Conference of Black Political Scientists
2023 Paper, Scales of Betrayal, Protection, and Rebellion in contending with Antiblackness, Strategies of Critique 2023: Care and Cure, York University (May 2023)
Paper, Fieldworking While Black: On the Plantocratic nature of Anthropology, Thinking Gender UCLA 2023
2021 Paper, Care, Death and Detention in the Wake of the Medical Insurance Complex in Kisumu, Kenya Faculty Commons Graduate Student Conference, Center for Ideas and Society
Paper, Refashioning Practices of Care Among Suppressed and Marginalized Women: A Qualitative Transnational Engagement/Review, Care, Mutual Aid and Reproductive Labor in a time of crisis, Thinking Gender UCLA 2021
Disrupting Anthropology: Ethical Methodology and The Case for Letting the Human Burn, Society for Applied Anthropology
2020 Paper, Engagements in Citizenship and Healthcare Practices in Eldoret, Kenya. Society for Applied Anthropology Conference, Albuquerque, NM - (accepted but conference cancelled due to COVID-19)
2019 Paper, Aesthetics of Solidarity, and the Possibility of Black Resistance. American Indian and Indigenous Collective, at University of California, Santa Barbara, Body as Archive Conference, Santa Barbara, CA
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS
2023 On the Anniversary of the Assassinations of MLK AND Lil’Bobby Hutton—A Discussion on Captive Maternals and War Resistance, with Joy James and Kalonji Changa, Center for Ideas and Society, UC Riverside
2020 Disrupting Medical Anthropology, Society for Applied Anthropology
Black Study and Liberatory Futures, Blackness Unbound
INVITED TALKS
2025 Lecture & Workshop, PRIME Program – Rooting out Antiblackness in Medical Standards – University of California Riverside, School of Medicine
2024 C-BLAAC Conference, Being Black in Anthropology
Duke University, On Body Detention and the Anti-Ethnographic, Black Feminist Theory Summer Institute
Lecture, PRIME Program – Considerations for a Physio-political compass of Collective Wellbeing, University of California Riverside, School of Medicine
S(CRIP)TS: Disability Justice and Antiblackness
Sex Work, Reproductive Justice and the Politics of Care, Women’s Studies Center, University of California, Riverside
2023 Lecture & Workshop, PRIME Program – Learning how to work with African, Black and Caribbean Communities in the Inland Empire, University of California, Riverside School of Medicine
Paper, Scales of Betrayal, Protection and Rebellion in Contending with Antiblackness, Reproduction of Possibility Colloquium, Columbia University, May 2023
2022 Guest Lecturer, Freedom Movements, Black Feminisms, and Black Radical Traditions ANTH 127 Political Anthropology, University of California Riverside
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INSTRUCTOR OF RECORD
2024 - present Department of Black Studies, San Diego City College – four six courses / semester
Reproduction: Politics, Practices, and Policies, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside
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2023 University Writing Program, Department of English, UC Riverside
ANTH 002 Introduction to Biological Anthropology Department of Anthropology, UC-Riverside
2022 ANTH 001 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology Department of Anthropology, UC- Riverside
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ADDITIONAL LANGUAGES
French – fluent | Swahili – proficient | ASL – classroom study
