The Stolen Relations project, launched in 2015 at Brown University, seeks to recover and reinterpret the often hidden histories of Indigenous slavery, offering a fresh perspective on the colonial past and its lasting impact.

In 2023, the HTRC celebrated the launch of "White Supremacy, Racism, and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking", an anthology exploring how anti-trafficking efforts are rooted in systemic racism and colonial power structures. The cluster also premiered "Fly in Power", a documentary on Asian migrant massage workers, highlighting labor exploitation and racial justice.

As part of the Simmons Center’s 10th Anniversary series, writer and ritual performance artist Cherise Morris ’16 returned to Brown for the premiere of the cosmic matter of Black lives. Through poetry, prayer, and ancestral wisdom, Morris invited audiences into a ritual performance exploring diasporic healing, ecological harmony, and racial justice.

In 2022–2023, Allyson LaForge, supported by the Simmons Center, led key efforts to inventory 10,000 cultural Belongings at the Tomaquag Museum. She helped adapt the museum’s cataloging system to reflect Indigenous knowledge systems, laying the groundwork for a major move and future use of Traditional Knowledge Labels.

To mark its 10th anniversary, the Center presented 'Racial Slavery, Marronage, and Freedom', a retrospective featuring Edouard Duval-Carrié, Jess Hill, and Rénold Laurent. Each artist, a longtime collaborator of the Center, debuted new work exploring resistance, memory, and the legacy of slavery through bold, layered visual storytelling and reflection.

In 2022–2023, the Carceral State Reading Group deepened its study of political imprisonment, focusing on Brown’s acquisition of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s papers. Members attended conferences, built relationships with activists, and collaborated with student and community groups on campaigns like Stop Cop City.

In 2022–2023, Decolonization at Brown (DAB) underwent vital restructuring to ensure sustainability, refocusing efforts and recruiting new members. Despite mid-year challenges, DAB hosted key events, including a screening of "What is this Place" and a discussion with Azad Essa on "Hostile Homelands".

Inspired in part by cultural theorist Stuart Hall, Unfinished Conversations (UC) is a new form of curatorial practice, public engagement, and programming to collect, give voice to, and provide a platform for untold histories, memories, and narratives related to the history of racialized slavery and its afterlives.

In 2022–2023, (De)Cypher: Black Notes on Culture and Criticism explored Black culture through study groups and conversations with working-class artists. The journal refined its methodology, culminating in a forthcoming edition, and hosted Cyphering While Black, a multimedia series featuring live discussions with independent hip-hop artists.

In 'Speculative Ecologies The Intimate Bond of Freedom and Green', Renée Elizabeth Neely-TANNER creates layered, intuitive landscapes inspired by the Maroon communities of the Dismal Swamp. Drawing on memory, history, and place, each painting becomes a map of liberation—spiritual, emotional, and ancestral—guided by color, texture, and care.

Through interviews with five Latinx and Caribbean restaurant owners in Providence, Serving a Plate Back Home explores how food, memory, and migration intersect. This photo-based exhibition highlights restaurants as sites of storytelling, cultural identity, and transnational connection. Each dish served carries history, home, and heart.

The Symbolic Slave Garden Student Caretaker Group is restoring and reimagining the garden as a living archive of Black land stewardship. Through historical research, hands-on gardening, and collaboration with other heritage gardens, students honor the resilience, knowledge, and cultural legacies of enslaved Africans.

The Cluster's Slavery, Democracy, and Racial Violence in the Americas workshop united scholars and activists to examine colonialism’s legacy in shaping racial violence, linking slavery’s history to modern issues like police brutality and mass incarceration.

Since March 20, the experiences of five Latinx and Caribbean restaurateurs in Providence have been featured in the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice along with the experiences of four other local restaurant owners. The common thread stringing the stories together: Each restaurant owner migrated to the United States with hopes of bringing a piece of their heritage along with them.

Titled “Serving a Plate Back Home: Migration Stories of Latinx and Caribbean Restauranteurs in Providence, R.I.,” the exhibition consists of an audio interview series and photo collection that “offers a glimpse into the personal journeys and intentions behind five restaurants that function as enclaves for Latinx and Caribbean communities in Providence,” according to the event’s website.

Design, art magazine celebrates South Asian culture, aims to erase barriers to knowledge.

When Brown University released its landmark 2006 report documenting the institution’s historical involvement in slavery, many of its recommendations were one-time fixes: revising the university’s official history, creating memorials, and the like. Some, however, required longer-term engagement, such as the creation of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ), a research hub focusing on the history of slavery and its contemporary impacts.

‘Indefinite’ presents Walker’s sociological findings on sleep hygiene, role of racism in jail culture

Book discusses consent, politics, violence of Antebellum era New Orleans

The Reimagining New England Histories: Historical Injustice, Sovereignty and Freedom project tells Black and Indigenous histories through publications, educational programming and exhibitions. Founded in 2021, the initiative is a grant-funded partnership between Williams College, Mystic Seaport Museum and the Brown Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.

Lonnie G. Bunch III, the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and Prof. Anthony Bogues, Director of Brown University's Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ), share about the Global Curatorial Project co-convened by the CSSJ and the Center for the Study of Global Slavery at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The Global Curatorial Project, which grew out of conversations that came after a conference at the CSSJ, includes the "In Slavery's Wake" exhibition and book project as well as the "Unfinished Conversations" oral histories project.