reelaviolette botts-ward, PhD, is a homegirl, an artist, and a community curator from Philadelphia, PA. She is currently a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow with the Reparations and Anti-Institutional Racism (REPAIR) Project at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in the Medical Anthropology Program. At UCSF, ree brings radical Black feminist healing arts to healthcare and medical science spaces. She is also an affiliated UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in American Studies at UC Davis, where she bridges gaps between academic and community audiences through the arts.

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In 2015, ree founded blackwomxnhealing, an intergenerational wellness collective that uses art and ritual to support the somatic, ancestral, and spiritual healing of everyday Black women. With blackwomxnhealing, ree curates exhibitions, courses, healing circles and research that illuminate marginalized communities’ decolonial visions for care. 

Her first book, mourning my inner[blackgirl]child, was published with Nomadic Press in 2021. She has published articles, book chapters, and creative works with the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Routledge Press, and the University of Arizona Press, among others. She is also the 2024 Poet in Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and a Contributor in Residence for Columbia University’s Synapsis: a Journal for Health Humanities, where she writes on art, spirituality, and healing for scholars, patients, and practitioners.

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ree has taught courses in the African American Studies department at the University of California, Berkeley and Merritt Community College in Oakland, California. In 2022, she founded the UCSF REPAIR Communiversity Certificate Program, where university folks and community folks are invited to learn alongside each other. Through the Communiversity, she has also taught courses like #BlackFeministHealingArts and Black Birthing & Matrilineal Healing in UCSF’s Medical Anthropology department.

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ree received her PhD in African Diaspora Studies with a Certificate in Global Urban Humanities from the University of California, Berkeley, her MA in African American Studies with a Concentration in Anthropology from UCLA, and her BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College.

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ree also identifies as..

a writer, a dreamer, a daughter of the sun, a soul in constant searching.. a sweet soft sacred soul who likes to move slow.. a story that blooms in seance.. she loves orange and corals, purples and pinks, playtime.. prayer.. altar calls.. calm waters.. rivers, and offerings to the moon.. she dances often, alone in her room.. womanly. womanist. rounded curves. in love with all that is absurd of her. she draws her dreams in collage.. crochet.. watercolor rites of passage poems..

ree is the product of the deep and daring love gifted by mothers.. sisters.. homegirls.. friends.. and a husband she cherishes deeply..

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For more on ree’s work, visit blackwomxnhealing.com / @blackwomxnhealing / @dr.reelaviolette on instagram.

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