Lisa Brock (aka Doc Brock) is a professor and activist who has spent her life in social justice movements and over thirty years in higher education. Doc Brock inspires regular people to make what the late Congressman John Lewis called “good trouble for justice.”

Dwayne Lawson-Brown, aka the Crochet Kingpin, is co-host of Spit Dat, the longest-running open mic in Washington, D.C.

Divya Kumar-Dumas is a historian of South Asian art and architecture, specializing in the designed landscapes of first millennium South Asia.

Jennifer A. Ferretti is an artist, information professional, first-generation American Latina/Mestiza guided by critical praxis, not neutrality, and the founder and principal of We Here™️, a community for library and archives workers who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color.

Raimi Gbadamosi is an artist, writer and curator. He is a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Group 'Afroeuropeans', University of Leon, Spain, and the 'Black Body' group, Goldsmiths College, London. He is on the Editorial board of Journal of African Studies, Open Arts Journal and SAVVY, and on the boards of Elastic Residence, London and Relational, Bristol. He was Head of Fine Art, De Montfort University, Leicester and a Research Associate at WiSER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Gbadamosi is currently Department Chair and Professor at Howard University.

Maleke Glee is the inaugural Director of STABLE. Before joining STABLE, he held positions for the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Prince George’s African American Museum.

Tao Leigh Goffe is a London-born writer, professor, and interdisciplinary media artist. Based in New York City, her work negotiates Black diasporic intellectual and political life. She specializes in colonial histories of race, debt, and technology and is the founder of the Dark Laboratory.

Thembinkosi Goniwe is an art historian, curator, and writer whose work explores contemporary African visual arts. His curatorial projects reflect postcolonial and decolonial criticism in the context of black radical thoughts and Global South discourse.

Jessica Marie Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Johns Hopkins University. Johnson is a historian of Atlantic slavery and the Atlantic African diaspora. She is also the Director of LifexCode: Digital Humanities Against Enclosure.

Negarra A. Kudumu | Art + Healing is an integrated, research-driven agency engaged in critical, public discourse, praxis, and education about contemporary art and healing headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

“Dr. Mel’s” personal, professional, and political commitments are to “Black and Indigenous people of color (BIPOC) and overlapping and interlocking queer, trans, nonbinary, intersex, and feminist communities pursuing social and environmental justice.”

Zen Marie is an artist who works in a variety of media. Core to his practice is a concern with how meaning is formed through different media, spaces and processes. His focus areas have included international sport, identity, nationalism, and public infrastructure.

Mpumelelo is one of South Africa’s leading artists & cultural activists, with two Berlinale world premiered films & the internationally acclaimed award winning post rock band BLK JKS amongst other tricks under his hat.

Deyane Moses is an Army veteran, multidisciplinary creative, educator, and curator living in Baltimore, Maryland. She is deeply passionate about Black History, archives, and cutting-edge design.

In the last twenty years, Ronald Muchatuta has emerged as a fiery, passionate, and undaunted visual artist determined to use his platform to effect change and discourse in our contemporary context. Hailing from Zimbabwe, Ronald explores potentially Zimbabwe’s largest social issue: the Diaspora.

Najma Nuriddin is a highly accomplished filmmaker with a wealth of experience and a strong commitment to telling emotionally meaningful stories that connect and question the world around her. Najma has been involved in the film industry for over 12 years, serving as a director, producer, and educator.

Kurt Orderson, an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Town, is known for his innovative approach to filmmaking that skillfully incorporates historical and archival visual culture and political and transnational solidarity elements into films, creating unique pedagogical tools.

Sheri Parks, Ph. D., is a public intellectual, strategist, senior higher education professor, administrator, and author who works to bridge the wisdom of communities and the academy to address urgent societal challenges.

Naadira Patel is an artist, graphic designer, and illustrator. She currently leads studiostudioworkwork, a multidisciplinary art, research, and design studio based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The studio works with artists, feminist, LGBTQI+, and other social justice organisations producing publications, illustrations, and other published material.

Jay Pather is a choreographer, curator, and academic based in Cape Town. He is an Associate Professor and directs the Institute for Creative Arts at UCT. He also curates Infecting the City Public Art Festival and the ICA Live Art Festival.

Zachary Price is a performer, writer, interdisciplinary theorist, and scholar who investigates the political, economic, and historical conditions that shape cultural production. Price’s first monograph, Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination, was published by The Ohio State University Press and explores Black and Asian cultural production through martial arts within a variety of performance modalities such as everyday practice, film and media, music, theater, and dance. My writing has also appeared in Theatre Topics, The Drama Review, The National Review of Black Politics, Journal of Asian American Studies, and The Postcolonialist. I have contributed to the edited volumes Sports Plays and Classics In and Out of the Academy: Classical Pedagogy in the Twenty-First Century.

Raél Jero Salley makes art, curates exhibitions, writes words, teaches as a professor, practices yoga, trains in martial arts, grows plants, and is the Founding Creative Director of The Space for Creative Black Imagination, Inc.

The New York Times says Joyce J. Scott, “uses humor, every bit as much as art…to open up difficult conversations about race and inequality and to build community in her hometown.”

Born in Baltimore in 1948, Joyce J. Scott grapples with profound social, historical, racial, economic, and personal challenges that concern society at large in dazzling beadwork, sculpture, textiles, jewelry, printmaking, and performance. For five decades, she has upended hierarchies of art and craft, insisting that artistic expression is that “extra inch of life” that nourishes the soul even in the most challenging circumstances. Best known for her virtuosic use of beads and glass, Joyce J. Scott’s works across all media beguile viewers with beauty and humor while confronting racism, sexism, ecological devastation, and complex family dynamics. 

Lester Spence is a Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He specializes in the study of black, racial, and urban politics in the wake of the neoliberal turn. An award winning scholar (in 2013, he received the W.E.B. DuBois Distinguished Book Award for his book, Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics) and teacher (in 2009, he received an Excellence in Teaching Award), he can regularly be heard on National Public Radio and the Marc Steiner Show.

Marie Tattiana Aqeel comes from a supportive artistic family with a rich history of land-based living, activism and community engagement in and around Washington, D.C. “Health is wealth. I am dedicated to creating art with deep regard for its community service.”

​​Cultural historian, architectural designer, and curator, Mabel O. Wilson teaches architecture and Black studies at Columbia University, where she also serves as the director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies.

As an artist, author, and curator, Deb Willis's art and pioneering research have focused on cultural histories envisioning the black body, women, and gender. She is a celebrated photographer, acclaimed historian of photography, MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, and University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.