Kimberly Fuentes Carrillo

Dr. Kimberly Fuentes Carrillo (she/her/ella) is an Assistant Professor in Civil Science and Community Studies at UW-Madison. Her research bridges community-based participatory methods, transformative justice frameworks, and harm reduction organizing to ask, “How do we create a world where our collective liberation is a communal imperative?” From 2020 to the present, Kimberly has served as the Research and Services Director at the Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOPLA), where she coordinates harm reduction services, peer support groups, and participatory research projects alongside criminalized sex workers. Her latest project, “Geographies of Utopia”, is a co-led initiative with SWOPLA that explores how criminalized neighbors in Los Angeles’ red light district cultivate liberatory practices through resistance to surveillance, tracing joint dispossession, and art-based healing. Kimberly is committed to forging ethical partnerships with communities abandoned by formal structures and funding streams, particularly recently incarcerated transgender, and gender expansive populations for whom visibility increases vulnerability.