mycareer

Daniela Gomes Ph.D. 

Dr. Daniela Gomes is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University. She is a Ph.D. in African and African Diaspora Studies with a certification in Women and Gender Studies by the University of Texas at Austin, M.A. in Cultural Studies with a certification in Media, Information and Culture by the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil, and BA in Journalism by the Universidade Metodista de Sao Paulo. 

Dr. Gomes is an activist in the Afro-Brazilian and African Diaspora Movement and uses her work to connect people in the African Diaspora. The focus of her efforts is to build international bridges to fight against racism around the globe. 

Born and raised in a poor peripheral area of Sao Paulo, Dr. Gomes found inspiration in the Hip Hop movement to fight for new goals and perspectives. In her book manuscript Hip-hop salvação: Afro- narratives of the hip-hop generation in São Paulo, Brazil Or how hip-hop showed us the way out! Dr. Gomes presents Brazilian hip-hop’s potential to work as a salvation tool—from racial alienation, conformity, lack of opportunity, etc.—for Afro-Brazilian youth within the hip-hop community in São Paulo, Brazil. Therefore, using as starting point the sentence “hip-hop salvou minha vida,” her work addresses the formation of a salvationist discourse in Brazilian hip-hop and explains the impact of this discourse on Black youths living in the poor peripheral areas of São Paulo.

Dr. Gomes has developed several lectures and participated in conferences focusing on race relations in Brazil and other countries. She has also been interviewed by different media channels, such as MSNBC and AlJazeera English, where she talked about pertinent topics to the African Diaspora community in Brazil and abroad. In 2016, Dr. Gomes presented the TED Talk “O poder do hip-hop” during the TEDxSaoPaulo, where she was able to talk about her activism and its relations to the hip-hop movement. In 2019, she presented the talk The Impact of Bolsonaro on Brazil for the Blackademics TV.

Dr. Gomes work can be found in publications such as “The Revolutionary Generation: Hip Hop, Resistance, and Awareness in Sao Paulo-Brazil” in Words Beats & Life (2015); “‘É nóis mano’ – Hip-Hop diaspora, activism and Black empowerment in Sao Paulo,” in In This Together: Blackness, Indigeneity, and Hip-Hop edited by Hudson, A., Ibrahim, A., Recollet, K. (DIO Press USA 2019); “Living the African-American Way of Life—Impressions and Disillusions of an Afro-Brazilian Woman in the United States” appeared as a chapter in the volume, Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production, edited by Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour and Elizabeth Hodge-Freeman (Palgrave McMillan, 2016). 

Photo: Joshua Gonzales

Dr. Gomes was also one of 10 participants selected from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to participate in the First Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent in 2011. Years later, she returned to the United Nations headquarters and presented a talk on Racism and Xenophobia in Latin America at the 5th session of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 2013. Dr. Gomes has also attended the 2014 and 2019 editions of the Rainbow Push Coalition Annual International Convention, where she talked about Human Rights and the Afro-Brazilian community.

Daniela Gomes, Ph.D

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
San Diego State University