Aurora Higgs, M.Ed
(She/They)
Who Is Aurora?
Aurora standing in front of a mural of her image, painted by Nico Cathcart
A Black Queer Artist-Scholar for your Nerves!
Aurora Higgs is a queer Black trans visionary from Richmond, Virginia. She’s a speaker, performer, and media producer who uses her platform to promote equity and elevate queer BIPOC voices.
As the founder of Borealis Consulting, LLC and Board Member of the Virginia League of Planned Parenthood, Aurora helps shape medical practice guidelines and protocols to better ensure that transgender policies are appropriate, progressive, and compassionate.
Aurora is a speaker and facilitator focusing on social justice, gender and sexuality studies, education, and DEI work. She has facilitated queer-affirming programming and training for state agencies like the Virginia Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services. She has spoken on panels of national and international organizations like She the People and Unite UK. Currently, Aurora is pursuing a doctorate in interdisciplinary media studies. Her research centers on the representation of trans people of color within digital media.
Aurora is an activist in her own community; she has worked with Delegate Danica Roem to pass trans-affirming legislation at the state level. She has also been featured in publications like Richmond Times-Dispatch and was named one of Richmond's Top 40 Under 40, by the Richmond Style Weekly.
My Mission
My mission as a speaker, scholar-artist, and consultant is to unapologetically integrate my identity and personal politic with my scholarship and art.
As a Black transgender woman, taboo has always surrounded my identity. The intersections between taboo and radical queer identity are socially and politically linked. Technically, just being visible in normative spaces (e.g. at grocery stores, in public restrooms, and through media) is a taboo in a heteronormative White supremacist society. I leverage and re-conceptualize the nature of “the taboo” to foster generative and afro-futuristic/afro-surrealist discourse about identity, sexuality, gender, performance, and new epistemologies.