T Smith is a Black and non-binary organizer, scholar, and creative. They are a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Chicago, where they received their master’s degree. T’s research explores young Black activists and what they mean when they say “we do this ‘til we free us”. T is a Black queer feminist, abolitionist, and freedom dreamer who centers the experiences of folx on the margins of the margins. They bring these praxes to Brave Space Alliance as the Services Supervisor. In this role, T oversees various services that Brave Space offers such as the gender-affirming rooms and QT Shop.

T understands their queerness much in the way as it was articulated by bell hooks: “queer as not about who you’re having sex with, that can be a dimension of it, but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”