The African American Cultural Center and NC State University Libraries invite our NC State campus and surrounding community to our first annual Black Research Symposium. We center the theme “The Power of Community: Afro-Diasporic Worldbuilding and a Sustainable Futurity.”  As the first of its kind on NC State’s campus, the Black Research Symposium will feature Black diasporic learning, scholarship, and epistemologies via cutting-edge research, storytelling, creative works, discussion circles, community-based projects, and industry initiatives from the NC State campus and surrounding community.

When envisioning a Black Research Symposium, we ask these central questions - What is required to create a Black futurity where Black people are thriving? What do we need to sustain our communities? What critical theory and frameworks must we engage in order to address social problems across the Black Diaspora? What type of political economics, systems, and institutions need to be abolished and dismantled? How do we build a future that is sovereign, just, and sustainable?

Invited are students, scholars, faculty, social justice activists, artists, creators, storytellers, entrepreneurs and community members.  Join us as we engage in the practice of Sankofa, to promote futuristic thinking, to embody the principle of Ubuntu, to foster Harambee, and to assert rest as a revolution!