The student Administrative Assistant position will provide general office support and critical administrative work on a number of projects and daily needs as determined by the staff including event planning, outreach, and staffing events as needed. The Center is a dynamic space on campus, and the selected candidate will be an important member of the Simmons Center team helping to advance questions about historical understanding and social justice connected to the legacies of the racial slave trade.

This position will begin September 2023 and run through the end of spring semester (with potential to continue). The position is flexible in terms of hours and start date, but we would like the student to work between 8-10 hours weekly during business hours Monday-Friday 8:30am-4:00pm. This position will work in-person at the Center.

This position is a student worker grade D with a starting salary of $14/hr

Learn More and Apply Today!

Please reach out to Africa Smith at africa_smith@brown.edu with any questions about this position.

The Walking Tour Guides will provide educational and administrative support over the course of the academic year needed, and in particular, will provide support during Family Weekend on the afternoon of October 13. Guides will also have the option of taking on additional small projects to help promote the tours and educate the public. The tour guides will receive paid training on the Slavery & Legacies Walking Tour. The Slavery & Legacies Walking Tours examine the history behind Brown University, the State of Rhode Island, and their roles in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The tours help students (K-12 + college) as well as adult groups think critically about the University and state histories.

Guides will be expected to learn the scope of these tours and be able to facilitate discussions with visitors based on their knowledge of topics connected to the tour including how to advance questions about historical understanding and social justice connected to the legacies of the racial slave trade. Interested students can learn more about these tours here.

This position will begin September 2023 and run through the end of spring semester (with potential to continue). The position is flexible and varied in terms of hours, but we anticipate tour guides will work a regular schedule of around 5 hours per week, usually on weekdays. There may also be the opportunity for occasional evening and weekend hours to help with special events and tours. We are especially interested in working with students who might be on campus during summer 2024. This position will work in-person at the Center and on campus.

This position is a student worker grade D with a starting salary of $14/hr.

Learn More and Apply Today!

Please reach out to Nada Samih-Rotondo at nada_samih-rotondo@brown.edu with any questions about this position.

The student Special Project Coordinator will provide support and critical administrative work on a number of special projects and events as determined by the staff including event planning, coordinating with guests and institutional partners, organization of project documents and information, and staffing events as needed. The Center is a dynamic space on campus, and the selected candidate will be an important member of the Simmons Center team helping to advance questions about historical understanding and social justice connected to the legacies of the racial slave trade.

This position will begin September 2023 and run through the end of spring semester (with potential to continue). The position is flexible in terms of hours and start date, but we would like the student to work between 8-10 hours weekly during business hours Monday-Friday 8:30am-4:00pm. This position will work in-person at the Center with potential for remote work once on-boarding is complete.

This position is a student worker grade D with a starting salary of $14/hr.

Learn More and Apply Today!

Please reach out to Kiku Langford McDonald at kiku@brown.edu with any questions about this position.

The student Communications Coordinator will provide critical support on a number of communications/outreach projects including but not limited to: designing graphics for programs and events; ensuring the Simmons Center’s website is up to date and making edits as needed; creating dynamic pages related to research clusters and ongoing projects; designing weekly newsletters; developing social media posts and responding to social media messages in a timely manner; writing short pieces and articles to be featured on the Center’s website/e-newsletter; staffing and photographing events at the Center; assisting with photo and video editing; and other duties as assigned.

The Center is a dynamic space on campus and the selected candidate will be an important member of the Simmons Center team helping to advance questions about historical understanding and social justice connected to the legacies of the racial slave trade and will work closely with staff.

This position will begin September 2023 and run through the end of spring semester (with potential to continue). The position is flexible in terms of hours and start date, but we would like the student to work between 8-10 hours weekly during business hours Monday-Friday 9:00am-5:00pm. This position will work in-person at the Center with potential for remote work once on-boarding is complete.

This position is a student worker grade D with a starting salary of $14/hr

Learn More and Apply Today!

Please reach out to Kiku Langford McDonald at kiku@brown.edu with any questions about this position.

The Simmons Center is looking to hire creative and energetic Symbolic Slave Garden Caretakers for the academic year (with the potential to continue). In small spaces beside their cabins and huts on the plantation, along marginalized hillsides, in swamps, gullies and forests, and in outdoor sanctuaries created to honor their dead and contemplate that ancestrality, enslaved Africans and their descendants throughout the Americas “stole” back their own time and labor in snatches of the night, on Sundays or “holidays,” to plant garden plots of use, beauty, and spiritual and physical refuge. The Simmons Center’s Symbolic Slave Garden designed by Prof. Geri Augusto draws on that history to render imaginatively a small part of what the slaves knew and wrought, and what they might have thought as they created new landscapes against all odds. It is a work of cognitive justice and contemplation.

The Symbolic Slave Garden Caretakers will meet regularly (around once per month) with Simmons Center staff and Prof. Renée Ater to learn about and plan for the physical and intellectual maintenance and growth of the Simmons Center’s Symbolic Slave Garden and associated programming. During warmer months, work will also include providing physical care for the garden on a regular basis including weeding, planting, watering, painting of the garden wall, and helping with other improvements and general upkeep as assigned. Caretakers will also be involved with creating documentation and both planning and participating in public programming about the garden as a public memorial space on campus.

This position will begin September 2023 and run through the end of spring semester (with potential to continue). The position is flexible and varied in terms of hours, but we anticipate Caretakers will work around 10-20 hours per month during colder months (for planning meetings and research) and 2-4 additional hours per week during warmer months (for garden maintenance and programming work). We are especially interested in working with students who might be on campus during summer 2024. This position will work in-person at the Center with potential for remote meeting attendance during colder months.

This position is a student worker grade D with a starting salary of $14/hr.

Learn More and Apply Today!

Please reach out to Kiku Langford McDonald at kiku@brown.edu with any questions about this position.

One of the Simmons Center’s key public humanities projects is the Mellon Foundation-funded Reimagining New England Histories (RNEH), which aims to foreground the silenced stories and neglected experiences of Indigenous communities and peoples of African descent in New England. The project is organized in collaboration with Williams College, Mystic Seaport Museum, and a group of community advisors.

The Simmons Center is currently accepting applications for a Student Coordinating Assistant (SCA) to support the efforts of the RNEH K-12 Curriculum Committee (CC) while the group works to develop lessons that foreground the histories, contributions, and experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples in New England.

The SCA will support the work of the CC by helping to organize and record committee meetings, format, edit, and produce supplementary materials for lesson plans, and help to promote and support outreach efforts. The SCA may also provide other editorial, administrative, and organizational support.

This position will begin September 2023 and run through the end of spring semester (with potential to continue).

This position is a student worker grade E with a starting salary of $16/hr.

Learn More and Apply Today!

Please reach out to Kiku Langford McDonald at kiku@brown.edu with any questions about this position.

The Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice (Simmons Center) at Brown University is offering enrichment opportunities to creative, energetic, motivated high students for the 2023- 2024 school year. The Simmons Center is a scholarly research center with a public humanities mission. Our work is focused on projects that examine the history and legacies of the racial slave trade. 

During the enrichment program, students will work closely with Simmons Center's Manager of Education Nada Samih-Rotondo, a certified grades 7-12 educator, to develop and implement community-based projects deeply rooted in social justice.

The individual project plan includes the following:

• Purpose and goals
• Draft timeline of when goals will be met 
• List of needed resources/contacts
• Written monthly reflections
• Final presentation in the form of students’ choice such a research paper, oral presentation, panel, performance, etc.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis 

If you have any questions please reach out to Nada Samih-Rotondo at: nada_samih-rotondo@brown.edu

Apply

Tuesday, September 19 • 6–7pm • Churchill House, 102 • 155 Angell St.

Come learn about the Carceral State Reading Group, a space dedicated to the abolitionist study of scholarly texts and archives on carceral practices and alternatives. Led by Brown University students, this group is open to all Brown and Providence Community members who are interested in learning more about these topics.

Overview

This fall, Professor Geri Augusto is organizing a small, not-for-credit, experimental study group on quilombos, which will, among other aims, lay the foundation for a future IAPA course at the Watson. Quilombos are generative touchstones for considering a host of contemporary public policy conundrums in the two largest and most populous countries of the Americas, Brazil and the USA.

The field of maroon/quilombola studies is not just a source of  hinking about slavery’s complex after-lives, or the land conundrums and struggles to defend their territorial rights engendered by settler colonialism, but also about other repertories of living together in greater equality, and causing less harm to the earth in the present.

Objectives

1. The study group will help open the way to more conversations on these matters where social justice, black geographies, indigenous and quilombola ecologies of knowledge and modes of being, and public policies intersect, and sometimes clash.
2. As a collaborative, cross-country reading and research group involving both undergraduate students and professors and drawing on knowledge traditions and intellectual production from both countries, the study group will also be an experiment in more equal, collaborative pedagogy and hybrid formats.
3. Over the course of the semester, Brown participants will collaborate with their Brazilian counterparts to conceive and organize a virtual mini-symposium on “Black Geographies/Public Policies,” to take place in early 2024, as well as a digital exhibit on quilombola arts.
4. The symposium should generate ideas for further collaboration, mutual exchange visits, and public engagement, including measures of concrete benefit to the quilombola communities themselves, as well as provide a additional materials for new courses.

Interested?

Interested students should email geri.augusto@brown.edu briefly detailing their reasons for joining the study group. Geri Augusto, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs
Deadline Extended to September 20, 2023