What Futures Can Global Studies Imagine?

This presentation explores how educational justice is being reimagined through a blend of public policy, transnational scholarship, and community-led advocacy. Drawing on reforms advanced under former Colombia’s Minister of Education Aurora Vergara Figueroa it highlights a shift toward territorial equity, and inclusive quality education. The presentation examines examples of the results of global collaborations between universities in Colombia and the United States and partnerships with philanthropic institutions to demonstrate how interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration can foster transformative action. Together, these efforts illustrate how Global Studies can contribute to imagining and enacting futures rooted in equity and social justice.

Aurora Vergara-Figueroa is a distinguished Afro-Colombian scholar and public intellectual whose work bridges higher education, public policy, and critical studies on race, gender, class, and land dispossession. With deep expertise in Critical Race Theory, Comparative Historical Sociology, Feminist Critique, Diaspora Studies, and Afro-Latin American Studies, she has significantly shaped academic and policy discourses both in Colombia and internationally. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University as a fellow of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute, part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. A columnist for El País América, she also made history as Colombia’s first Afro-Colombian Minister and Deputy Minister of National Education. Her leadership and advocacy earned her recognition as one of Forbes’ most powerful women in Colombia in 2024 and as ‘Afro-Colombian of the Year’ in 2023 by the Color de Colombia Foundation and El Espectador. Vergara-Figueroa holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and previously served as director of the Center for Afrodiasporic Studies (CEAF) and professor at Icesi University (2012–2022). She is the author and editor of several influential works, including Estudios Afrocolombianos: Lecturas Esenciales, Descolonizando Mundos, Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia, and Demando mi Libertad, and has contributed to volumes such as the Routledge Handbook of Afro-Latin American Studies and Oxford Bibliographies in Sociology. Her recent publications continue to explore Afro-Colombian histories and knowledge production, reaffirming her role as a leading voice in Afro-diasporic scholarship.