Chérie Rivers is a scholar and practitioner of Black and indigenous ecologies. She is founder and co-director of Dandelions’, an educational biodynamic farm that integrates the legacy of freedom farming with practices that encourage a reciprocal relationship to the earth. She is also an associate professor of Geography and Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches courses—including Freedom Farming, Beyond Sustainability, and Liberation Geographies—that integrate land-based service learning with conceptual studies of decolonial geography.
She has published books and articles about how colonial legacies continue to normalize social, political, and ecological violence, including To Be Nsala’s Daughter: Decomposing the Colonial Gaze and “Of Clay and Wonder.” She holds a PhD in African Studies from Harvard University, where she was a pioneering member of the Social Engagement Initiative.
