We cannot understand where humanity has been and where we are going without Black Studies.

The newly established Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies is a multidisciplinary institute that is a think tank for Black Studies research, including issues of race and racism. Housed in the College of Arts & Sciences' African American and Africana Studies (AAAS) program, the multidisciplinary institute will establish research clusters across campus and promote UK's growing research and scholarship on topics of importance to global and local histories, such as race in the Americas, African cultures and global impact of Black people from antiquity to the future. Many of the research clusters are concerned with conceptions of race in the future, contemporary conceptions of race, slavery and the quest for freedom, the long legacy of racial discrimination and violence including the struggle for civil rights.

Join Anastasia Curwood, history professor and director of the AAAS program, and DaMaris Hill, English professor and interim director of the AAAS program through spring 2021, in conversation with A&S Interim Dean Christian Brady as they discuss immediate and long-term plans for the Institute.