The Unfinished Conversations Series is a global oral history and archival project documenting how the legacies of slavery and colonialism shape lives today. Led by the Simmons Center and Global Curatorial Project partners, it has recorded over 200 hours of interviews across four continents, centering community voices often erased from official histories.

During Family Weekend, 2023 Heimark Artist in Residence Renée Elizabeth Neely-TANNER presented an artist talk and exhibition exploring the legacy of the Great Dismal Swamp Maroons. Her work connected their resistance and freedom to the expressive possibilities of abstract art, inviting audiences to reflect on history through a liberatory visual lens.

In its first year, the Slavery’s Financial History Research Cluster gathered Brown scholars to explore how slavery shaped global finance. Through guest lectures and collaborative discussions, the group emphasized "following the money" as key to uncovering new insights into slavery’s role in modern economic systems.

Art and the Freedom Struggle: The Works of Mumia Abu-Jamal (March 1–December 11, 2024) explores artistic expression under incarceration. Curated by Melaine Ferdinand-King, the exhibit draws from Abu-Jamal’s archive and features his art, poetry, and music centered on abolition, Black liberation, and community. The show includes events, a catalog, and a new essay by Abu-Jamal.

In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World is a traveling exhibition exploring the global legacies of slavery, colonialism, and Black freedom-making. Featuring over 100 artifacts, images, and multimedia, it connects history, art, and descendant voices from The Unfinished Conversations oral archive. Co-curated by Brown and the Smithsonian, it will tour five countries from 2025–2028, fostering global dialogue.

Reimagining New England Histories is a four-year collaboration between Brown, Williams, and Mystic Seaport Museum that centers African and Indigenous histories in the region. Supported by a Mellon Just Futures grant, the project produced exhibits, publications, and curricula while building lasting, reciprocal relationships with community partners.

In 2023–2024, the Carceral State Reading Group served as a vital space for dialogue on captivity and repression, engaging with local and global crises. Anchored by Brown’s acquisition of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s archive, the group hosted a public symposium exploring resistance, political imprisonment, and organizing, with lasting materials now available for continued learning and action.

In 2023–2024, the Symbolic Garden of the Enslaved team adapted through their first winter, mulching with comfrey and collecting seeds. They hosted an African-inspired amulet workshop in spring and revitalized the garden in summer with new plantings and structures. They also began building a website to share the garden’s history, symbolism, and plant profiles with the public.

Simmons Center Walking Tour Guide Traci Picard and Simmons Center 2023 Heimark Artist in Residence Renée Elizabeth Neely-TANNER have both been involved the the First Unitarian Church of Providence’s mission to search for truth behind its involvement in slavery.

Every year, distinguished Brown scholars are nominated for Research Achievement Awards by their colleagues for conducting exceptional and transformative research. Amongst the 2025 selection is Manning Assistant Professor of American Studies and Simmons Center Fellow Elena Shih.

In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World explores the history and enduring impact of the global slave trade through an understudied lens: the work of enslaved people and their descendants to build resilience and community through art, rebellion, spirituality and politics.

As a curatorial fellow for the Brown Arts Institute, Simmons Center Public Humanities Graduate Student Christina Young ’26 A.M. provided comprehensive support for Elysee Barakett's poignant installation ‘Presence of Absence’ from conceptualization to execution. Young collaborated closely with Barakett on both the workshop and installation components, coordinating with BAI's marketing team to create promotional material, securing exhibition space in the Lindemann Performing Arts Center, and facilitating installation. Her behind-the-scenes work helped to bring Barakett's deeply personal exploration of loss and memory to the Brown community through this collaborative, 55-foot mural installation. 

Historians at Brown University and Tribal members from across New England are launching a project they hope will bring awareness to the historic enslavement of Indigenous people in North America.

What does “reparatory justice” mean, and how is it different from “reparations?” These are some of the questions explored in this CBH Talk by Laura Trevelyan, who in 2016 learned that her ancestors were absentee owners of 1000 enslaved Africans, and Arley Gill, Chair of the Grenada National Reparations Committee, in conversation with Simmons Center Director Anthony Bogues.

The First Unitarian Church of Providence is confronting its history of benefiting from the slave trade through its new exhibit, “Owning History.” Traci Picard, Simmons Center Walking Tour guide and author of A Church in a Triangle: Race, Religion & Power in a Rhode Island Congregation 1720-1850 has led research to uncover these connections.

The Imagined New (or, What Happens When History is a Catastrophe?) – Volume III at The Africa Institute gathered artists, scholars, and students to explore war, grief, and hope. Presented with VIAD and the Ruth J. Simmons Center, the program combined lectures, performances, and conversations to examine how violence shapes our world—and how alternative futures might be imagined.

In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World at the National Museum of African American History and Culture explores the global legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism, and the enduring struggles for Black freedom. Through powerful storytelling, historical artifacts, and interactive displays, the exhibition foregrounds resistance—from shipboard rebellions to modern movements. Created in collaboration with the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, it underscores the importance of telling unvarnished histories at a time when such truths are increasingly under political threat.

'In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World' at the National Museum of African American History and Culture explores the legacy of slavery and the ongoing struggle for freedom. Through artifacts, art, and immersive installations, the exhibition highlights both the horrors of enslavement and the resistance movements that followed. Created in collaboration with the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, it brings together global research to showcase the history of Black liberation across continents.

Prof. Brittany Friedman’s book explores the nature of carceral violence and its impact on marginalized communities. The event was moderated by Simmons Center Research Cluster Faculty Fellow Prof. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve.

The event was part of a series hosted by the Mass Incarceration and Punishment in America Research Cluster and sponsored by the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.

In this investigation, Arman Deendar and Shravya Sompalli examine how New York City’s evolving enforcement strategies continue to target Asian migrant massage workers under the banner of “public safety.” Through their collaboration with Red Canary Song and the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice, their project "Body Workers’ Atlas" maps the hidden bureaucracies of policing and exposes how everyday administrative practices shape life and labor in Queens.

When the American university took shape in the decades after the Civil War, slavery was an important subject of research almost from the start. But what does it mean to study slavery through historical records with inescapable biases? What counts as evidence, and who has the authority to make those determinations?

As many universities have begun to examine their involvement in slavery, Brown University's 2006 Slavery and Justice Report has served as a model for these studies which have now become a regular feature of the academic landscape.