Writing

Overall, Nadia Mbonde’s scholarship explores the ways mental health and reproduction are linked across the lifespan—from menstruation to menopause. Grounded in reproductive justice, her dissertation bridges ethnographic methods and lived experience to illuminate historical violence, structural inequities, and pathways toward thriving futures amid ongoing oppressive conditions.

Forthcoming in 2026

Dissertation: “Black Reproductive Mental Health in the Afterlife of the Plantocracy” (defended January 2026)

Book Chapters

Surrounded by fresh flowers, numerous posters of the book How To Be Disabled In a Pandemic are splayed out on the hardwood floor.

A group photo at the book party of some of the editors and author of the anthology How To Be Disabled in a Pandemic.

“Mental Health and Black Futurity: Life, Birth, and Caregiving in Double Pandemics,” in How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic, edited by Faye Ginsburg, Rayna Rapp, and Mara Mills, published by NYU Press (2025)

Learn more about the project Disability Covid Chronicles that birthed this anthology.

Articles

“Wading in Digital Waters: Black Mad/Cripistemologies of Motherhood and “Mental Illness” in Online Support Groups Amid the Double Pandemic,” in Disability Studies Quarterly, edited by Efrat Gold and Simon Adam (2025)

“Media, Mediumship, and the Supernatural,” published on the American Anthropologist website (May 19, 2023)

“Mad/Cripistemologies of Pandemic Parenting: Insights for Our ‘Post‑COVID‑19’ Present,” published in Mad in America (2023)

“Visions of Black Futurity Amidst the Double Pandemic of COVID‑19 and Police Brutality,” published in Somatosphere (2021) and republished on Disability Covid Chronicles.