Opening on Juneteenth, Newport’s new Center for Black History shares deep roots with the Simmons Center. Directed by Adjunct Lecturer Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, the Center for Black History features an African spirit bundle, once part of the Reimagining New England Histories exhibition “Entwined.” Brown Public Humanities Master’s students helped to conceptualize inaugural exhibitions and conduct research at the center.

This research cluster is reshaping scholars’ understanding of the history and growth of capitalism and brings together the best scholars on this subject in the world. This three-year project is co-led by the Simmons Center and the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam).

"The Words of Rubel" event at Brown University marked a transformative moment for the Symbolic Reparations Project (SRP) which aims to bridge computational approaches with accessible cultural production.

Reflections from Postdoctoral Fellows Christopher Baldwin and Latoya M. Teague

This project fosters collaborative critical inquiry into the study of human trafficking, as well as cultivates an intersectional framework that acknowledges the ways in which race, class, gender, nation, and sexual forms of power and inequality govern contemporary anti-trafficking efforts.

This research cluster seeks to examine punishment and the U.S. carceral state through an interdisciplinary lens. The cluster operates from the frame that race and anti-Black racism are cornerstones to understanding the vast leviathan of punishment in America.

The making of the modern world was in part constituted by the historical injustices of colonialism and racial slavery. This research cluster is a joint project between the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs and the Simmons Center.

Reflections from Akeia de Barros Gomes, Ph.D., Steven Lubar, and Christina Young ’26 A.M.

Reflections from Zawdie Sandvliet and Ningxin Gao.

This research cluster explores the history and persistence of structural racism in biomedicine as it intersects with economic and social conditions. The cluster focuses on reimagining the knowledge we produce about race and health from a social justice perspective.

This endeavor to “follow the money” investigates the technologies of finance that facilitated the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Atlantic plantation complex by developing new perspectives on the financial mechanics of slaving operations and the trade’s relationship to maritime insurance, commodity brokerage, currency arbitrage, banking, and other elements of the financial services industry.

The Simmons Center facilitates a year-long reading group which focuses on historical and contemporary issues of imprisonment, incarceration, captivity, criminalization, and policing. The reading group is a collaboration between various sectors of the Providence community and the Center.