Assistant Professor Leonora Souza Paula is being recognized for her gender equity and social justice work as the 2024 recipient of the Inspiration Award for Community Engagement.

This award, which is sponsored by the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen), recognizes individuals who have made exceptional global contributions to gender equity and have demonstrated inclusive action and leadership in advancing social justice.

“I am honored to receive this award, which recognizes my intellectual leadership in national, and global spaces. My publicly engaged work promotes widespread high-impact practices and advances all the MSU 2030 goals of expanding opportunity, advancing equity, elevating excellence, and strengthening community,” Paula said.

Laurie Medina, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at MSU, nominated Paula for the award.

“Leonora is an accomplished scholar of literary and cultural studies who has published widely on the cultural production of Black Brazilian writers, artists, and activists as means to critique class, race, and gender inequities, imagine more than just and equitable futures, and recuperate Black historical memory. As a result, she has played key leadership roles in advocacy and mobilization to achieve justice for the communities to which she belongs across local, national, and even international scales.”

“Leonora has played key leadership roles in advocacy and mobilization to achieve justice for the communities to which she belongs across local, national, and even international scales.”

Dr. Laurie Medina

Besides being an Assistant Professor in MSU’s Department of English, Paula also is an affiliated faculty in the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities Program, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Center for Gender in Global Context. She is a founding co-director of the Sister Circle Mentoring Program for Women of Color and a former co-leader of the Kilomba Collective.

Founded in November 2019, the Kilomba Collective is the first community-based organization of Black Brazilian women in the United States and is dedicated to centering the perspective and realities of Black Brazilian women and girls while connecting with other gender and racial equity organizations across the African Diaspora.

“In my time at Kilomba, I have significantly advanced the organization’s mission by engaging in strategic partnerships and creating platforms for participation nationally and globally,” Paula said. “This work is about applied Black and Women of Color Feminist epistemologies; it is an embodied practice of systemic and institutional change.”

At Michigan State University, Paula co-founded the Sister Circle Mentoring Program, an initiative that is designed to enhance the educational and professional experience of young women of color leaders in the United States. This initiative supports students’ academic, social, and professional needs by fostering peer relationships, mentorship, and community building. 

“Professor Paula’s scholarship illuminates the cultural production of Black Brazilian writers, artists, and activists as means to critique class, race, and gender inequities, imagine more just and equitable futures, and recuperate Black historical memory.”

Dr. Sheila Contreras

As an educator, researcher, and thought leader, Paula has more than a decade of experience in anti-racist education, community engagement, and transnational collaboration. She also has worked with nonprofit organizations and educational institutions in the United States, Latin America, and Africa, developing strategies to build international coalitions around racial and gender justice.

“Professor Paula’s scholarship illuminates the cultural production of Black Brazilian writers, artists, and activists as means to critique class, race, and gender inequities, imagine more just and equitable futures, and recuperate Black historical memory,” said Sheila Contreras, Associate Professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University, who introduced Paula at the 2024 Inspiration Awards Ceremony. “As a new member of the MSU community, she stepped up to co-found a mentoring organization Sister Circle with her colleague Professor Hamilton-Wray. Through her work in Kilomba, she has also collaborated to advance common agendas with other global anti-racist and gender equity organizations…I have been struck by how much Professor Paula’s work models praxis for us, the integration of theory and practice.” 

An American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellow and public humanities scholar, Paula’s research focuses on contemporary Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Diasporic literature and culture, urban memory, and cultural heritage preservation. Her current scholarship examines the role of Black spatial imagination in the process of claiming literature and culture as heritage recovery and epistemic reparation.

“My work is at the intersection of traditional research and publicly engaged humanities. I am deliberate about engaging in advocacy work as a direct way to achieve the impact I theorize in my scholarship,” Paula said. “My work with the Kilomba Collective illustrates exactly that. As a co-creator of spaces of intervention with this immigrant community, I am intentional about uplifting voices and experiences that have been delegitimized in traditional academic culture. Co-creating solutions with communities seeking change demonstrates the value of the humanities in action in ways that are collaborative and impactful.”

“My work is at the intersection of traditional research and publicly engaged humanities. I am deliberate about engaging in advocacy work as a direct way to achieve the impact I theorize in my scholarship.”

Dr. Leonora Souza Paula

Last year, Paula was invited to participate in a meeting of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

One of the missions of the forum is to advise the United Nations Human Rights Council on Global Reparatory Justice for African Diasporic Peoples. This advocacy work as well as the academic trajectory of Paula prompted her to organize and lead a meeting with the Minister of Racial Equality of Brazil that was successful in building a partnership.

The 2024 Inspiration Awards were presented at the GenCen’s annual reception on April 5, 2024.