The Black & Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute intends to lay the groundwork for building new and strengthening existing relationships among scholars, artists, community organizers, and practitioners using intersectional feminist approaches in their work.

Acting as an institutional hub, the BIFFI will provide structure and resources to scholars, artists, and practitioners seeking academic training, practitioner training, and opportunities for collaboration with colleagues and organizations working with Black and Indigenous communities.

Over the course of the three-year project, the BIFFI will bring together twenty-four (24) fellows, fifty (50) summer institute instructors, seventy-five (75) summer institute attendees, and nine (9) community organizations who use intersectional feminist approaches in their work with Black and Indigenous communities.

As a result of BIFFI’s programming we anticipate an increase in collaborations that include but are not limited to: co-teaching, research, publishing, program building, curriculum design, conferences, artistic production, collective actions, policy design, healing modalities, local and regional environmental sustainability projects, and the building of new institutions.

Black & Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute (BIFFI) coalesces around three objectives:

• Promoting interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and cultural production that elevates intersectional feminist Black and Indigenous Studies through a “Fellows-in-Residence” program that hosts elders, artists, scholars, organizers, and practitioners at UVA.

• Offering intensive instruction in intersectional feminist Black and Indigenous theories, methods, curricular design, pedagogies, and community building work through Summer Institutes.

• Providing infrastructure and support for rigorous and innovative curriculum design and pedagogy by establishing the first “Black and Indigenous Studies Certificate Program” in the US South at UVA.