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Who Owns Black Data III Joins Amistad Research Center in a Fight for the Black Future

The Who Owns Black Data team joined the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans for three days of research, community, and deep culture.

Congratulations to the Amistad Research Center on a stunning public event with keynote conversationalists Andrea Armstrong, Jo Banner, and Gia Hamilton, moderated by the brilliant Shennette Garrett-Scott, and performances from Sha'Condria "iCon” Sibley, Cassandra Watson, Knockaz Brass Band, and the GoldenFeather Mardi Gras Indians.

Over sixty participants from around the world joined working sessions drafting ethical guidelines for digital Black research centers of the present and the future—and yes, AI was a topic of conversation!

Thank you to all of our sponsors and supporters, especially the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem, the Diaspora Solidarities Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, JHU Sheridan Libraries, Tulane University, Loyola University of New Orleans, Create that Party, O’Imagination, Blanco Studios, Oritri Catering, Xavier University of Louisiana, Elysian Catering, and all of our guests and participants. More recaps from WOBD III to come.

If you want to learn more, WOBD IV is headed to Puerto Rico in 2027! Stay tuned!

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Nadejda Webb at A Sea of Islands Symposium (June 10-11, 2026)

This June, find Dr. Nadejda Webb (LxC Guide, WOBD, We Live Language Lab) presenting at Centro’s A Sea of Islands Symposium:

These islands were never meant to find each other. But they did, and they do. 🌊

This June, CENTRO is bringing together scholars, artists, and activists from across the U.S. territories and their diasporas for a landmark 2-day symposium, A Sea of Islands: U.S. Territories in Relation.

For over a century, federal legislation, judicial decisions, and colonial power have shaped the lives of millions living under U.S. territorial rule, from Puerto Rico to Guam to the U.S. Virgin Islands and beyond. Fiscal crises. Mass outmigration. Climate disasters. The questions of sovereignty, justice, and freedom have never been more urgent.

Come learn, connect, and build with us. Sessions cover: Art, cinema & curatorial practices, Territorial peoples & the law, Relational decolonial ecologies, Militarization & resistance, Archival & preservation practices, and a Documentary film screening.

📅 June 10–11, 2026 📍CENTRO, 2180 3rd Ave, New York City 🎟️ FREE RSVP

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AI Literacy Showcases Critical Work by Youth in Providence

Shout out to Dr. Kim Gallon (LxC Guide, Community Health Informatics Data Lab, Black Beyond Data Co-PI) on bringing critical media literacy skills to young artists in Providence, RI!! These artists brought their critical thinking skills and imagination to bear on what it means to challenge, critique, and disrupt Ai.

In the News: Underwriting Souls, a Requiem

“The libretto of Atlantic Requiem, which will be performed for the first time this autumn by the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC singers, has been drawn jointly from the text of the Catholic requiem mass, from documents held in Lloyd’s own archive and from American legal testimony from 1791….

“The new requiem was written by Manchester-based composer David Önaç using parts of the traditional requiem mass as a way to pay his respect to lost enslaved souls. It also to reflect the compromised role of Christianity in the history of enslavement, through its religious conversion of Indigenous people and the use of biblical texts to justify slavery.”

Read the rest.

LifexCode is on Break!

LifexCode (and Ecosystem Notes) will pause for the rest of June, but look for us after July 5 and keep up with our summer lab and research season. Thank you for all you do to make this ecosystem thrive! See you soon!

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Who Owns Black Data III Announces Keynote Speakers

If you’re following our IG, you’ve already met the powerful thinkers who will be sharing their knowledge in less than two weeks!

Andrea Armstrong

Jo Banner

Gia Hamilton

Register Here

Yomaira Figueroa at Haverford College

Spotted at Haverford College: LxC Guide and Diaspora Solidarities Lab Co-Director Yomaira Figueroa delivered a talk as part of the Distinguished Lecturer Series. Drawn from her current book project, her talk “Against Olvido: Motherhood, Memory and the Mangle,” drew a crowd of students, faculty, and community members. The event was co-hosted by the English department at the invitation of Keishla Rivera-Lopez. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, Dr. Figueroa!

JHU Digital Humanities Series Impact and Call for Fall 2026 Presenters

We are excited to share that over the Fall ’25 and Spring ’26 semesters, the JHU Digital Humanities workshop series welcomed 354 attendees from 46 unique institutions! We extend many thanks to our featured speakers and attendees!!!

The Digital Humanities Workshop Series evolves from the DH Seminar Series, a nine-year effort in which graduate students from the Johns Hopkins History department—with support from Jessica Marie Johnson and Tom Lippincott— organized and facilitated discussions on the theory, practice, and application of DH.

With support from the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, the series now incorporates the wide array of DH work happening at JHU affiliated with the Center for Digital Humanities, LifexCode: DH Against Enclosure, and the Sheridan Libraries.

Current co-coordinators Drs. Emily McGinn and Nadejda Webb look forward to an awesome 2026-2027 workshop:exclamation:️:sparkles:

If you are interested in presenting your work, or would like to recommend a colleague’s awesome work, please reach out! You can also submit your recommendation or express your interest using the QR code.

Julia Mallory Receives “Miss Sarah” Fellowship Award

Congratulations to Diaspora Solidarities Lab Community Fellow (2024 Cohort) Julia Mallory on being awarded the Miss Sarah Fellowship from Trillium Arts. Mallory is working on her novel-in-progress, Fasttailed Girls.

Mallory recently led a writing workshop as part of Sisterhood is a Verb: Cultural Workers Discussion Circle during the recent Toni Cade Bambara weekend activation led by Muse360 and co-organized by LifexCode.

Underwriting Souls on the Black in the City of London Podcast

Lloyds of London is widely considered the most august name in the world of insurance. Having grown from a small concern offering information to mariners to becoming a huge market for insurance, Lloyds of London is a fixture in the Square Mile.

While there has long been some knowledge about the involvement of many figures associated with Lloyds in the slave trade and ownership of the enslaved, in the past there has been a smokescreen put up around the data provided to researchers who sought to quantify the extent of the involvement that those at Lloyds had with slavery. This has led to the shameful narrative of access denied that Lloyds began to engage with, first with their own employees and community, then with the wider world after 2020.

In 2021, Lloyds began the process of commissioning a serious piece of arms-length research into the involvement of Lloyds members in the slave trade. This podcast is an interview with those that carried out the research. This interview was carried out after the launch of their findings in the winter of 2023.

Alexandre “Sasha” White is a sociologist and historian of medicine, race and racism, and empire. He is an assistant professor at John Hopkins University in the Department of Sociology.

Pyar Seth is now an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His work lies at the intersection of Black Studies, historical and medical anthropology, and postcolonial theory, much of his research focuses on the rationalization of state violence and the abstraction and distortion of Black life and death.

Listen below!

If you’re a part of the ecosystem and have a note you want shared, drop us a line at admin@lifexcode.org!!! See you next week!

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Gather with us for Who Owns Black Data III: The Fight for Black Futures

Doors open at 5:30 PM
Nunemaker Auditorium (Loyola University)
New Orleans, Louisiana

Join us for a keynote conversation about Black data and Black futures featuring three dynamic thinkers, institution builders, and activists in the fight for Black life, history, and culture. We will close out the conversation with a performances from Sha'Condria "Icon" Sibley featuring Cassandra Watson Francillon, Knockaz Brass Band, and Chief Shaka Zulu of the GoldenFeather Nation.

Register Here

Keynote Speakers

Andrea Armstrong is the Dr. Norman C. Francis Distinguished Professor of Law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Professor Armstrong joined the faculty in 2010. She is a leading national expert on prison and jail conditions and is certified by the U.S. Department of Justice as a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor.

Jo Banner is the founder and director of The Descendants Project, a nonprofit she co-founded with her twin sister, Dr. Joy Banner, in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. Holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications, she uses her education to honor the legacy of enslaved people while defending descendant communities.

Gia Hamilton is Executive Director and Chief Curator of the New Orleans African American Museum and an esteemed applied anthropologist renowned for her pioneering work in investigating the intersections of land, labor, and cultural production. With a unique approach known as Social Magic™ methodology, she delves into the intricate dynamics of institutions and communities, exploring the depths of social connectivity.

Special Guests

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Sha’Condria “Icon” Sibley is a Central Louisiana-born and longtime New Orleans-based storyteller and sage, poet, writer, performing artist, visual artist, teaching artist, singer, songwriter, actress, wellness advocate, and visionary, whose work centers the voices of (Southern) Blk/Indigenous Women/Girls/People through ancestral remembrance and recollection, present position and power, and future hope and healing. Her work spans across page, stage, canvas, music, talk radio, and short film. Raised in the small-town, southern missionary Baptist church tradition with an educational background in biology and public health, her work naturally intersects between spirituality and healing. A proponent of poetry and art as healing and liberation tools, Icon shares her work and workshops inside schools, universities, prisons, juvenile detention centers, at conferences and festivals and has worked for over a decade and counting, creating, organizing, and hosting community-centered, arts-driven events.

Cassie Watson Francillon is producer, artist, activist and harpist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She explores sonic futurism by way of folk, jazz & experimental electronic themes on harp. A multifaceted performer, she plays both traditional and innovative settings alike for both original and commissioned music. Recent activations she has created, band-lead and produced include “Consortium” collaborative black sonic technology (2022-4), “Lanati” liberation of acoustic sound for well-being in a public environment as nature (2024), and movements for Ron Bechet’s From the Storms of Our Souls (2025).

Knockaz Brass Band The Knockaz Brass Band was formed in early 2014 by a group of young, professionally trained musicians. The Knockaz Brass Band is the leading group in the next generation of New Orleans Traditional Brass Bands. The band specializes in New Orleans Second-Line arrangements, along with traditional jazz pieces and go-go funk music. http://www.knockazbrassband.com/

Chief Shaka Zulu of the GoldenFeather Mardi Gras Indian Nation Shaka Zulu is a master of Black Masking suit design, an art form specific to New Orleans, Louisiana, which originated as part of the Indigenous and African culture in the city. In 1995, Zulu and his wife Naimah formed the performing arts company, Zulu Connection, and toured their company of dancers, stilt dancers, and drummers nationally and internationally. Zulu has also toured internationally with NEA Jazz Master Donald Harrison Jr. as a masking performing artist and percussionist in Harrison’s band Congo Nation.

All events are free and open to the public. Join us!

Hosted by the Amistad Research Center. Sponsored by the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem, the Diaspora Solidarities Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Tulane University, and Loyola University of New Orleans.

Art: Soraya Jean-Louis, Constellation #3// Cosmographs of Belonging Series, 2023

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Who Owns Black Data III is May 20th to 22nd, and is hosted by the Amistad Research Center as part of its 60th anniversary festivities. The Amistad Research Center is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most comprehensive independent archives specializing in the history of African Americans and other ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities. This is the third iteration of Who Owns Black Data (2024, Baltimore and 2025, Yale University) and we look forward to continuing this journey in 2027 in Puerto Rico. Learn more at wobd.blackbeyonddata.org

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The Big News: Who Owns Black Data III Registration Goes Live Tomorrow!

Get ready to head to New Orleans for the third installment of our annual convening Who Owns Black Data? Where we ask ourselves hard questions about what is happening with Black data in this time of enclosure, empire, and fascism.

Registration goes live at midnight CST!

Register on May 1

In the meantime, follow us on Instagram to as we reveal the specialists who will be joining us this round and keep up with longer updates here on our newsletter!

TONIGHT at 7:30 PM EST: Zophia Edwards Book Event

Zophia Edwards (LifexCode Guide, Co-Director of Digitizing Caribbean Archives in the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem) is discussing her new book in a virtual event sponsored by the Rutgers University Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies.

Use the QR code on the flyer to register!

Check out Tatiana Esh at the Black Zine Fair!

Congratulations to our own Tatiana Esh (Project Manager, Diaspora Solidarities Lab) who will be exhibiting at the Black Zine Fair in New York City in a week!! Tatiana is an amazing artist whose work was featured in Slavery in Motion, a project of the DSL microlab Remains // An Archive.

Did You Know….

…our own Laura Rosanne Adderley has a prize named after her?

The Laura Rosanne Adderley Prize for Student Scholarship on the Study of Slavery, its Legacies and the Cultures of Resistance Against Anti-Blackness at Tulane University recognizes “exemplary undergraduate scholarship” related to the topic. Congratulations to this year’s winner Gabi Janis for her paper, “Picturing the Plantation through Toni Morrison’s Beloved.”

Congratulations to Nadejda Webb on a Successful Fellowship Year at the Price Lab

Nadejda Webb (LifexCode Guide, Assistant Director of LxC, Co-PI of Who Owns Black Data, and Director of the We Live Language Lab in the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem) spent the year on fellowship at the Price Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Webb shared her work building We Live Language Lab and supporting LifexCode as Assistant Director—necessary brilliance! Congratulations on a successful year!

MaDeja Leverett Receives Two Research Fellowships

Congratulations to MaDeja Leverett (Doctoral Candidate, Johns Hopkins University) who received two research fellowships for next year. One, Virginia Museum of History & Culture’s 2026 Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship, will allow her to continue research on her dissertation this summer. The second, the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation Dissertation Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia will support her for a semester of research in Philadelphia at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Leverett is a former LifexCode member with the Black Testimony Project.

Congratulations MaDeja!

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Spring 2026 LifexCode Research Celebration

Every semester we gather, we eat, we laugh, and we learn from each other, celebrating the work we do building knowledge and community against enclosure.

This celebration began with acknowledging the Black women and children killed in a rash of femicides the last two weeks, including Cerina Fairfax, Shaneiqua Pugh, Nancy Metayer Bowen, Lisa Grier, Barbara Deer, and more named and unnamed. In the words of Black Feminist Future, “we’re calling this out for what it is: femicide.” For context and reflection, read Dr. Brittney Cooper’s most recent editorial on the Shreverport killings here.

Thank you to Dr. Amaka Okechukwu for sharing your work at the LifexCode Research Celebration!! Thank you to Leana Mason (Black Beyond Data) for sharing your work hosting and organizing the Liberation and Abundance Writing Retreat!

Congratulations to all of our labs, projects and members across the ecosystem! And thank you for all you do.

The audio is an excerpt from June Jordan, “A Poem About My Rights,” April 23, 2001, University of Pennsylvania and it reads below:

"...but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life...."

Congratulations Dr. Samantha Stephens!!!!

The ecosystem celebrates newly minted Ph.D. Samantha Stephens (English, UVA)! Stephens has been a Solidarity Fellow in Remains // An Archive, a Diaspora Solidarities Lab seed lab. We celebrate you!!!

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The Interrogating Puerto Rican Studies Symposium at PR Studies Hub (April 23-24)

We love to see posts from the symposium hosted by DSL Faculty Mentor Aurora Santiago Ortiz and her collaborator Jorell Melendez-Badillo. Dr. Yomaira Figueroa (Co-Director, Diaspora Solidarities Lab) is an author in the volume and in attendance as well!

En el Puerto Rican Studies Hub, sus co-directores Aurora Santiago Ortiz y Jorell Meléndez-Badillo lideran los esfuerzos por fortalecer los lazos entre Puerto Rico y su diáspora a través de la investigación, la colaboración y el trabajo con las comunidades.

At the Puerto Rican Studies Hub, Co-directors Aurora Santiago Ortiz and Jorell Melendez-Badillo lead efforts to connect Puerto Rico and its diaspora through research, collaboration, and public engagement (continued in the comments / continuado en los comentarios)

Congratulations to Dr. Santiago Ortiz, Melendez-Badillo and all of the authors!! Follow the hub on IG at @prstudieshub!

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Anthony Parnther, David Önaç, and an Atlantic Requiem to Honor Africans Trafficked into Slavery

A new Requiem Mass by David Önaç commemorating the lives of Africans trafficked into slavery.

The work draws on research by Underwriting Souls (dir. Alexandre White as part of the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem) into the historic involvement of Lloyd’s of London in providing insurance for ships involved in the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans – along with liturgical ritual, biblical texts and documents from the Lloyd’s archives. The sound world is influenced by the composer’s cultural heritage, bringing together European contemporary classical music and the African American traditions of spirituals, jazz and gospel.

Atlantic Requiem was commissioned by Culture& in partnership with Johns Hopkins University, Lloyd’s of London, and is presented at LSO St Luke’s by Culture& with the London Symphony Orchestra. Supported by Lloyd’s of London.

Buy your tickets here.

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DH Workshop Series: Creative Computation, with Carly Schnitzler, HAPPENING TODAY APRIL 16TH, 12- 1:30 PM EST

Carly Schnitzler, lecturer in the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University, will discuss critical code studies as method and rhetorical strategy in researching works of creative computation, from the first work of e-literature (produced in 1953) to contemporary experiments.

All events are hybrid, and you’ll receive a zoom link upon registration if you’ll be joining us virtually.

To view the recordings for this year DH Workshop Series recordings.

Keywords for Black Louisiana (K4BL( in the Omohundro Coffeehouse Series

Keywords for Black Louisiana (K4BL) spent some time at the Omohundro Institute, virtually, as part of their OI Coffeehouse series. Representing the collective were Daija Yisrael, Kaillee Coleman, Guadalupe Garcia, Laura Rosanne Adderley and Jessica Marie Johnson

Join us for the OI Digital Projects Coffeehouse, a midday series exploring innovative digital humanities projects in early American history.
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This spring’s sessions include:
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April 14 — Jessica Marie Johnson (@JHUArtsSciences) and the @life_x_code Collective
𝐾𝑒𝑦𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐵𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎
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April 28 — Valérie Capdeville (@univrennes2)
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐸𝑛𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝐵𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑆𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝐸𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑡ℎ 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦
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May 12 — @monumentculture (Independent Scholar)
𝐵𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡 𝐴𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑦 (𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠)
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Hosted by @jimambuske and Martha Howard, the Coffeehouse invites participants to learn about each project and the possibilities of digital scholarship.
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Learn more and sign up: 🔗 oieahc.wm.edu/events-overview/oi-coffeehouse/oi-digital-projects-coffeehouse/
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New Publication from the Community Health Informatics Data Lab by Dr. Kim Gallon (Black Beyond Data)

Kim Gallon, “Transforming Silence into Narrative: Race, Breast Cancer, and Medical Imaging,” Journal of Medical Humanities, February 25, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-026-10007-8.

New Publication Alert!! Congratulations Black Beyond Data Exec Team member and LxC Guide Kim Gallon (Brown University) on her new journal article!

“This article examines medical imaging, including mammography, and its potential to obscure racialized structures of visibility, risk, and exclusion that hinder the full benefits of technological innovation. As AI applications are used to innovate medical imaging for breast cancer, these applications are based on training datasets that reflect White women’s bodies and health experiences. This article argues that medical imaging technologies and the data infrastructures on which they rely do not merely fail to represent racial differences; they actively participate in the construction of what becomes medically visible or intelligible. By analyzing The Cancer Journals (1980) and A Burst of Light and Other Essays (1988) by Audre Lorde, this research considers the relationships between race, the body, medical surveillance, and technological influence. Lorde’s narrative account of her struggle with breast and liver cancer, marked by her refusal to dissociate her body from her illness, provides a critical lens through which to question the presumed neutrality of medical imaging technologies.”

If you’re a part of the ecosystem and have a note you want shared, drop us a line at admin@lifexcode.org!!! See you next week!

Please join us for the bi-annual LifexCode Research Celebration and Black World Seminar takeover!!! Our semi-annual Research Celebration showcases the work happening across our ecosystem. In past years, this event has featured lightning presentations from lab members highlighting progress made throughout the semester and conversations and workshops with scholars including Marisa Parham, Alex Gil, Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Yomaira Figueroa, Laura McTighe and Women with a Vision’s E.D., Deon Haywood.

This spring’s research celebration we celebrate Dr. Amaka Okechukwu, Associate Professor in Sociology and the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University

Tuesday, April 22, 2026

JHU Campus, Gilman 308

12pm - 2pm EST

Dr. Okechukwu is the author of the award-winning To Fulfill these Rights: Political Struggle over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions (Columbia University Press, 2019). She is also an award-winning AADHum Scholar and the creator of Black Belt Brooklyn: Mapping Community Building and Social Life during the Urban Crisis, an irL Humanities Lab digital project exploring community and gentrification in Brooklyn.

Also celebration presentations from Leana Mason (JHU), Black Beyond Data Fellow and creator of the liberation in abundance Writing Retreat, and pedagogy updates from the K4BL Collective (Keywords for Black Louisiana, worldwide) on their progress towards a K4BL Undergraduate Course Curriculum, with support from a Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation Grant.

This event is co-sponsored by the JHU Center for Africana Studies and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts.

Members, look out for more details over the LxC listserv. This event is free and open to the public and also hybrid. If you are not a LxC member and would like a link to join the discussion, please email admin@lifexcode.org.

See you there!

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Toni Cade Bambara Weekend Freedom School for Lor Liberators

On April 10th and 11th, LifexCode partners with Muse 360, African Diaspora Alliance & Black Women Cultural Workers Archive to honor the life, work, and political imagination of Toni Cade Bambara!

Grounded in Bambara’s 16 Lessons explored in the documentary film, TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 min), the “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work features programming at Morgan State University, the 360 House, Blue Light Junction, and other community hubs to reach diverse audiences and ensure accessibility.

Below, we share details about the TCB Weekend // Lor Liberators // Toni Cade Bambara Freedom School Workshop (ages 4-12 only) event, happening April 11th. You can sign up for the entire lineup here.

This Freedom School session is an intergenerational space designed for children between the ages 4-12 to engage with the legacy of cultural worker Toni Cade Bambara. This session transforms themes highlighted in TCB –The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing into tangible activities through nature-based art, trust-building exercises, and collaborative poetry writing. Students will explore the interconnectedness of community while creating take-home keepsakes. A concurrent offering for children of caregivers attending the TCB documentary screening at the Parkway.

What: TCB Weekend // Lor Liberators // Toni Cade Bambara Freedom School Workshop (ages 4-12 only)

When: Apr 11, 2026, 5:30PM EST

Where: 10 E North Ave Suite 5, Baltimore

Sign up here

The Maryland premiere of TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara will be held on April 11 at 6:30 pm as part of Maryland Film Festival 2026. The founding Director of Muse 360, Ms. Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, will moderate a post-screening conversation with director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. You can find tickets here.

We send many thanks to partners Muse 360 (Lead Organizer), Maryland Film Festival (MdFF)/Parkway Theatre, Black Women Cultural Workers Archive (BWCWa), African Diaspora Alliance (ADA), Jen White-Johnson and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab!

Keywords for Black Louisiana at Rice University

This week, Keywords for Black Louisiana (K4BL) presented at Rice University, hosted by the Center for African and African American Studies and Fondren Library. Kaillee Coleman (Tulane, Associate Spanish Editor), Daija Yisrael (Georgetown, Assistant French Editor), Zaria El-Fil (UChicago, Digital Curation Fellow and Co-Project Manager) and Director/Editor in Chief Jessica Marie Johnson (JHU) represented the collective, and the audience included Alex Lee (@creolegenealogy) a Keywords Community Circle and Advisory Board Member, as well as genealogists, public historians, students, faculty and librarians from across the city.

Thank you Rice University for inviting K4BL to share their work!

Learn more about this LifexCode project at keywordsforblacklouisiana.org.

New Book by DSL Mentor on Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies

Congratulations to our Diaspora Solidarities Lab Faculty Mentor Aurora Santiago Ortiz and her new book, co-edited with Jorell Melendez Badillo on the future of Puerto Rican Studies!

“Interrogating The Future of Puerto Rican Studies brings together emerging and established scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine the disciplinary and epistemic transformations that have given way to new understandings of the field of Puerto Rican studies. Documenting the intellectual contours that have shaped the field of Puerto Rican Studies in the last decade, a diverse range of contributors survey the field with new lenses that are attentive to gender, queerness, disability, and Blackness among other things. A foreword by Yarimar Bonilla situates the volume in the context of the field’s shift, specifically in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, while other sections, including “Queering Puerto Rican Studies,” “Centering Blackness,” and “Disaster Studies and Environmental Studies,” as well as “Puerto Rican Studies in Broader Fields of Knowledges,” “Prefigurative Politics and Social Movements,” and “Legal and Political Disruptions,” create a vibrant archive of conversations taking place within the field of Puerto Rican studies with the aim of interrogating its future.”

Contributors. José Atiles, Bárbara Abadía Rexach, Yarimar Bonilla, daniela crespo-miró, Marie Cruz Soto, Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, Marcela Guerrero, Gustavo García López, Mónica Jiménez, Lawrence LaFountain Stokes, Marisol LeBrón, Pedro Lebrón Ortiz, Beatriz Llenín Figueroa, Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, Sarah Molinari, Marisel Moreno, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Aurora Santiago Ortiz, Karrieann Soto Vega, Daniel Vázquez Sanabria, Roberto Vélez-Vélez, Joaquín Villanueva, Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza

DTA Space Features New Spoken Word

New spoken word essay by Decolonising the Archive artist in residence Mutulu …will be dropping April 10th on our artist residency platform DTA Space. Mutulu is an artist, actor and aspiring community archivist on next Correcting our Collecting Reparative Archive Course.

Follow DTA on Instagram @de_archive or website decolonisingthearchive.com to witness and be part of something purposeful.

Decolonising the Archive is a community partner and collaborator on Repair Nation (a Digitizing Caribbean Archives project) with Black Beyond Data Co-PI and LifexCode Assistant Director Nadejda Webb!!

What is the Amistad Research Center?

The Who Owns Black Data? team recently announced that WOBD III: The Fight For Black Futures will be happening in New Orleans in May, hosted by the Amistad Research Center. So what is the Amistad Research Center?

Learn more through the videos below and follow LifexCode on Instagram at life_x_code) to hear when registration for WOBD III goes live!!

If you’re a part of the ecosystem and have a note you want shared, drop us a line at admin@lifexcode.org!!! See you next week!

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Grounded in Bambara’s 16 Lessons explored in the documentary film, TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 min), the “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Workfeatures programming at Morgan State University, the 360 House, Blue Light Junction, and other community hubs to reach diverse audiences and ensure accessibility.

Below, we share details about the Irresistible Revolutions of Cultural Work // The Toni Cade Bambara Zine Lab event, happening April 11th. You can sign up for the entire lineup here.

A hands-on workshop with Jen White-Johnson introducing zines as a tool for storytelling, documentation, and cultural memory. Participants will create their own zines while engaging Toni Cade Bambara’s lessons from TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing as prompts for reflection and creative expression.

When: April 11 | 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Where: 10 E North Ave Suite 5, Baltimore

Sign up here

The Maryland premiere of TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara will be held on April 11 at 6:30 pm as part of Maryland Film Festival 2026. The founding Director of Muse 360, Ms. Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, will moderate a post-screening conversation with director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. You can find tickets here.

We send many thanks to partners Muse 360 (Lead Organizer), Maryland Film Festival (MdFF)/Parkway Theatre, Black Women Cultural Workers Archive (BWCWa), African Diaspora Alliance (ADA), Jen White-Johnson and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab.

Grounded in Toni Cade Bambara’s assertion that “sister is a verb,” and as Alexis Pauline Gumbs reminds us, “sisterhood is built by action, not by biology,” we approach sisterhood as an intentional practice of showing up, holding space in love, and tending to one another. Guided by Black Women Cultural Workers Archive founders Nadejda Webb and Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, with a collective poetry collaboration led by Julia Mallory, this space invites participants into a lived practice of sisterhood rooted in presence, responsibility, and care.

We call in the healers, the poets, the gardeners, the artists, the educators, the cultural workers, the ones the community names into the role. Communally, we consider what it means to live into that naming, to “sister” each other building shared forms of care that are accountable and sustaining. We ask in consideration: what has Mama Toni Cade Bambara taught us about deeply supporting those we hold dear?

When: Apr 10, 2026 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm est

Where: 3100 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore

Sign up here

The Maryland premiere of TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara will be held on April 11 at 6:30 pm as part of Maryland Film Festival 2026. The founding Director of Muse 360, Ms. Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, will moderate a post-screening conversation with director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. You can find tickets here.

We send many thanks to partners Muse 360 (Lead Organizer), Maryland Film Festival (MdFF)/Parkway Theatre, Black Women Cultural Workers Archive (BWCWa), African Diaspora Alliance (ADA), Jen White-Johnson and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab.

Welcome to Ecosystem Notes, where we share updates on what is happening across LifexCode labs, projects, and members! If you like what you see, please support LifexCode by sharing this newsletter, attending events, or just dropping a note in the comments!

Friday April 10: COLLEGE STUDENTS + YOUNG PEOPLE // Sisterhood is a Verb: Intergenerational Dialogue on Toni Cade Bambara

Join Ms. Moriah Ray, Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson, and Ms. Sharayna Christmas at Morgan State University for an intimate meeting of the minds as Black femmes and gender expansive folx gather to discuss best practices for leading while ensuring we are caring for each other. Sign up here!

This intergenerational dialogue will focus on defining our evolving roles within liberation work and lessons learned from the legacy of Toni Cade Bambara. It will also be an opportunity for students to learn about Toni Cade Bambara before the screening of TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing on Saturday, April 11 at The Parkway Theatre. The conversation will be anchored in her radical vision for community care and creative labor.

This event is presented by Muse 360 in partnership with LifexCode and African Diaspora Alliance.

What: TCB Weekend // COLLEGE STUDENTS + YOUNG PEOPLE //Sisterhood is a Verb: Intergenerational Dialogue. Sign up here !

When: Apr 10, 2026 | 12:00PM - 2:30 pm est

Where: The James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Morgan State University (2201 Argonne Drive, Baltimore)

For more information on other “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work events, click here!

Look for more drops from “What the Plan?” next week!

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Spring 2026 LifexCode Research Celebration Guest Announced!

Please join us for the bi-annual LifexCode Research Celebration and Black World Seminar takeover!!! Our semi-annual Research Celebration showcases the work happening across our ecosystem. In past years, this event has featured lightning presentations from lab members highlighting progress made throughout the semester and conversations and workshops with scholars including Marisa Parham, Alex Gil, Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Yomaira Figueroa, Laura McTighe and Women with a Vision’s E.D., Deon Haywood.

This spring’s research celebration we celebrate Dr. Amaka Okechukwu, Associate Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Okechukwu is the author of the award-winning To Fulfill these Rights: Political Struggle over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions (Columbia University Press, 2019). She is also an award-winning AADHum Scholar and the creator of Black Belt Brooklyn: Mapping Community Building and Social Life during the Urban Crisis, an irL Humanities Lab digital project exploring community and gentrification in Brooklyn.

Also celebration presentations from Leana Mason (JHU), Black Beyond Data Fellow and creator of the liberation in abundance Writing Retreat, and pedagogy updates from the K4BL Collective (Keywords for Black Louisiana, worldwide) on their progress towards a K4BL Undergraduate Course Curriculum, with support from a Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation Grant.

This event is co-sponsored by the JHU Center for Africana Studies and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts.

Members, look out for more details over the LxC listserv. This event is free and open to the public and also hybrid. If you are not a LxC member and would like a link to join the discussion, please email admin@lifexcode.org.

Did you miss the recap?

Black Beyond Data and Diaspora Solidarities Lab members had a ball at the fifth annual CumbreAfro in Puerto Rico. Explore the recap post below:

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What is Who Owns Black Data?

The Who Owns Black Data? team recently announced that WOBD III: The Fight For Black Futures will be happening in New Orleans in May, hosted by the Amistad Research Center. But what is Who Owns Black Data? Relive the experience through the videos below (What is Who Owns Black Data? and WOBD Volume 2: The Black Past in Danger) and for more, follow LifexCode on Instagram at life_x_code)!

Interested in becoming a LifexCode member?

The seasonal call for researchers is closed, but look out at the end of the summer for the next term of antiracist and decolonial research and community opportunities.

If you’re a part of the ecosystem and have a note you want shared, drop us a line at admin@lifexcode.org!!! See you next week!

Grounded in Bambara’s 16 Lessons explored in the documentary film, TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 min), the “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work features programming at Morgan State University, the 360 House, Blue Light Junction, and other community hubs to reach diverse audiences and ensure accessibility.

Below, we share the line up of events spanning the “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work, with links to sign up!

TCB Weekend // COLLEGE STUDENTS + YOUNG PEOPLE //Sisterhood is a Verb: Intergenerational Dialogue

When: Apr 10, 2026 | 12:00PM - 2:30 pm est

Where: 2201 Argonne Drive, Baltimore

Sign up here

TCB Weekend // Sisterhood is a Verb: Black Women Cultural Workers Discussion Circle

When: Apr 10, 2026 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm est

Where: 3100 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore

Sign up here

TCB Weekend // Irresistible Revolutions of Cultural Work // The Toni Cade Bambara Zine Lab

When: April 11 | 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Where:10 E North Ave Suite 5, Baltimore

Sign up here

TCB Weekend // Lor Liberators // Toni Cade Bambara Freedom School Workshop (ages 4-12 only)

When: Apr 11, 2026, 5:30PM EST

Where: 10 E North Ave Suite 5, Baltimore

Sign up here

The Maryland premiere of TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara will be held on April 11 at 6:30 pm as part of Maryland Film Festival 2026. The founding Director of Muse 360, Ms. Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, will moderate a post-screening conversation with director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. You can find tickets here.

We look forward to sharing further details about each event throughout the week! We send many thanks to partners Muse 360 (Lead Organizer), Maryland Film Festival (MdFF)/Parkway Theatre, Black Women Cultural Workers Archive (BWCWa), African Diaspora Alliance (ADA), Jen White-Johnson and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab.

Founded by writer and professor Mayra Santos-Febres and hosted at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus for the last five years, this year’s CumbreAfro honored the legendary Afro-Puerto Rican activist and scholar Miriam Jiménez Román.

As reported in El Nuevo Día:

“La cumbre, explicó Santos Febres, también celebra su permanencia en un contexto difícil para la universidad pública. “Estamos celebrando porque hemos sobrevivido hasta ahora en estas condiciones de ataque continuo a la Universidad de Puerto Rico, sobre todo al recinto de Río Piedras”, dijo. “Este es un recinto de pensamiento crítico y de humanidades, y por eso esta cumbre es sobre las humanidades afro”.”

Below, Guesnerth Josué Perea, Executive Director of the Afrolatino Forum, explains the important role humanities, humanism, and Black humanity play in our activism and our research.

Presentations from Eduard Arriaga-Arango, Alexandre White, Jessica Marie Johnson represented Black Beyond Data alongside scholar and researcher, Maria Cruz Soto, who discussed archiving Vieques resistance to U.S. military occupation. Valeria Acevedo, doctoral student at JHU, assisted the panel with interpretation and translation. The panel was moderated by Mariluz Franco Ortiz, scholar and professor and Co-PI of the Centro de Investigación y Archivo Digital en Afrodescendencia (PRAFRO).

Black Beyond Data is honored to have an opportunity to be part of this historic event! Despite travel issues that prevented the Amistad team from joining us in person, Executive Director Kathe Hambrick submitted a video on behalf of the historic research center.

Enjoy the images and short clips of the team presentation and follow LxC on IG (life_x_code) for the latest updates.

Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson:

Dr. Alexandre White:

Dr. Eduard Arriaga-Arango

Who Owns Black Data III: The Fight for Black Futures is scheduled for May 20th to 22nd, 2026

WOBD III will be hosted by the Amistad Research Center as part of its 60th anniversary festivities. The Amistad Research Center is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most comprehensive independent archives specializing in the history of African Americans and other ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities.

More details soon! Join us!

Who Owns Black Data? (a part of the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem) is a historic series of convenings held at institutions around the country that gather a distinguished group of scholars, librarians, and archivists invested in Black history, humanities and Black life to discuss, elucidate, and provide public answers to the question: who owns and controls the Black historical and cultural record?

We cannot wait to celebrate with the Amistad Research Center!

Learn more about WOBD covenings at wobd.blackbeyonddata.org.

Thank you as always to our Digital Artist-in-Residence for this featured art: Constellation #3// Cosmographs of Belonging Series by Soraya Jean Louis, 2023 (@ancestralalchemyarts on IG)

La Cumbre Internacional de Afrodescendencia es una conferencia internacional del Centro de Investigación y Archivo Digital en Afrodescendencia (Centro PRAFRO) de la Universidad de Puerto Rico Recinto de Río Piedras, financiado por The Andrew Mellon Foundation y liderado por su investigadora principal y directora, la doctora Mayra Santos Febres.

Cumplimos cinco años, y durante este tiempo nuestra Cumbre Afro ha servido como una plataforma digna y merecida para todos nuestros pensadores, generadores de conocimiento, productores de saberes afrocentrados en el Caribe, Afrolatinoamerica y nuestras diásporas. A lo largo de estas cuatro ediciones de la Cumbre, hemos recibido líderes desde Ecuador, Perú, México, República Dominicana, Colombia, Estados Unidos, Cuba, Nigeria, Sudáfrica, las diásporas africanas, el Sur Global y Puerto Rico. You can find out more here!

The WOBD Team will present on Wednesday March 18th!

Panel Title: Ecologas de Datos Negros: Archivo, territorio y redes comunitarias

Kathe Hambrick, Amistad Research Center

Eduard Arriaga, Clark University

Alexandre White, Digitizing Caribbean Archives y Jessica Marie Johnson, Black Beyond Data

We cannot wait to hear about Marie Cruz Soto’s research (Archivo Histórico de Vieques) and be in conversation with our moderator Mariluz Franco Ortiz!!!

Who Owns Black Data? is a convening in the Black Beyond Data ecosystem. Learn more about WOBD at wobd.blackbeyonddata.org.

This newsletter is too long for email, but you want to read it all! Go ahead and click the title of the newsletter to open it in your email browser. love, dr. jmj

A Year (and Two Months) in Review

In 2019, Tina Campt offered the following keywords while reflecting on the brilliance of Simone Leigh’s art, the genius of maroon strategist and enslaved ancestress Harriet Jacobs, and the radical miracle of Black femme insurgency:

vessel:
a container for holding something;
a person into whom some quality (such as grace) is infused.

surface:
the outside part or uppermost layer of something
(often used when describing its texture, form, or extent);
to rise or come up to the surface of the water or the ground.

touch:
the feeling generated by contact of an item
with the exterior of the skin;
to come so close to as to be or come into contact with it.

formation:
an act of giving form or shape to something or of taking form;
an arrangement of a body or group of persons or things
in some prescribed manner or for a particular purpose

insurgency:
an active revolt or uprising;
insurrection against an existing government (usually one’s own)
by a group not recognized as having the status of a belligerent;
rebellion within a group, as by members against leaders.1

Since 2020, LifexCode has used these keywords as a guide and framework for the work ahead.

What a different world we live in now—and yet not.

We continue to fight for our breath, our bodies, our students, and our neighbors. Whether on screens or in person, in Signal chats or on paper, we continue to do the best work we can to bring safety, love, and knowledge to our worlds.

We have grown softer, quieter—including with this newsletter—and more reflective in this work, honing our skills at collaboration, collectivity, community, leadership, and analysis.

How do we fight the drive for data, the commodification of our attention, the pressure to give our choices, our critical thinking, our creativity, even our joy over to those in power? As Black, Caribbean, queer, trans, insurgent digital humanists, we have a superpower. We know how to do this. The best of us have been doing this.

Toni Morrison, after the 2004 election of George W. Bush, described feeling despondent. A friend called her, and when she tried to explain the paralytic feeling of helplessness, she describes her friend cutting her off and shouting: “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work — not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”2 This quote is often attribute to her directly, but it feels important, as director of an ecosystem, to note that it was her friend, “a fellow artist,” who called her back to herself. adrienne maree brown and Sonya Renee Taylor, two thinkers whose work has guided the LifexCode Guides this year, also described the importance of togetherness in this moment, of calling to check on each other, of calling out to each other to witness the pain of this moment and find joy. In the most recent episode of How to Survive the End of the World, Taylor explains:

“The only way through this is actually in relationship, right? And part of it again, when I think about like, what would love have me do? Love would have me do the opposite of what’s happening. And so what’s happening is secrecy and shame and disconnection of human relationship. Then moving toward love looks like saying out loud, like connection, like unapologetically being not that.”3

Getting into FORMATION against enclosure has never been more important.

The Ecosystem @ Work in 2025

The Black Press Research Collective Gives Us the “Freedom to Create”

Led by Kim Gallon (Brown University) and Michael Guy (Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University). The Black Press Research Collective, brought by Gallon and the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem to the Center for Africana Studies and Sheridan Libraries at JHU built a new educational tool for exploring the Black press archives collected on its website.

The New Directions in Black Press Studies book series, stewarded by Gallon and with Johns Hopkins University Press continues to accept submissions—if you have a book on the Black Press, please consider submitting!

The Community Health Informatics Data Lab at Brown University pressed send on two publications, “Tech Trusted Us” and “Voices for Health Equity.”

“This booklet, Voices for Health Equity, is the result of a year-long effort to listen deeply to health leaders in Providence—public health officials, clinicians, community advocates, nonprofit directors, and researchers—who are working every day to address health disparities in our city. Through semi-structured interviews, we invited them to share their insights on the patterns they see in health outcomes, the root causes of inequities, and the systemic barriers such as housing insecurity, food access, systemic racism, and uneven healthcare access that shape the health and wellness of our neighbors. Each conversation was reviewed collaboratively to ensure accuracy, respect, and the authentic preservation of the speakers’ voices.”

Download the publications here.

The lab also partnered with AS220, a Providence, Rhode Island community arts organization, to host a year long Technocultural Futures workshop This workshop offered arts education and leadership programming for artists ages 18–25, in Providence, allowing youth to explore the intersections of art, AI, leadership, culture, and social change.

Lab member Breanna Villarreal also published an essay in the Brown Journal of Medical Humanities about ways to use technology to fight racial bias and health disparities in women of color with breast cancer.

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab Continued To Center Community, Art, and Connection

The seeded lab Remains // An Archive offered a balm, with Slavery in Motion at the Baltimore Museum of Art in January. A collaboration between RAA, the research of Jessica Newby (Doctoral Candidate, Johns Hopkins University) and four artists, this event offered a touchstone for how slavery scholars, artists, and institutions can heal from broken pasts. Read the recap below.

The seeded lab Taller Entre Aguas celebrated the publication of its first edited volume, Water Proof: Olas de Memoria with Centro: The Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. TEA (directed by Sarah Bruno, Michigan State University) also hosted a summer retreat and sponsored a teaching institute on Black Puerto Rican Studies in collaboration with PROPA. Get your copy of the issue below:

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab participated in the fourth annual Cumbre Internacional de Afrodescendencia. The Directoras (Yomaira Figueroa, Centro/CUNY and Jessica Marie Johnson, JHU) presented alongside now co-Director of the Puerto Rican Studies Hub and DSL Faculty Mentor Aurora Santiago-Ortiz (University of Wisconsin). Joined by Katsí Yarí Rodríguez Velázquez and Joniel Pacheco.

The gorgeous art exhibition, Diasporic Collage, a curation by the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, found its way to a new home—Centro!!! The Center for Puerto Rican Studies welcome the exhibition home with an exciting opening, a healing reboot after its first opening. Read more below.

In the fugitive digital space, Taller Electric Marronage released its most recent dossier, a collection of writings and reflections on the theme: In a Time of War. Edited by Yomaira Figueroa and Nadejda Webb, the dossier also featured a launch and reading with the contributors. The dossier is available for reading here.

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab also hosted its annual writing retreat and Director’s Retreat bringing mentoring, networking and professional development to academics seeking guidance in managing large-scale research and institutional project.

Keywords for Black Louisiana (K4BL) Continues to Pave the Way (No, I’m not Biased!)

Keywords for Black Louisiana’s Public History Fellows (“Street Team”), a public history collaboration with Xavier University in Louisiana (XULA), participated in GenFest 2025 for the first time, at the New Orleans Public Library.

K4BL also hosted its first K4BL Incubator, an intensive one-day in-person at XULA where team members engaged in conversations and deep learning with invited Scholar Specialists.

This was also the first public presentation from the Keywords for Black Louisiana Teaching Fellows, a collaboration with the Xavier University Honors Program. Gratitude to Dean Shearon Roberts who has been a massive collaborator and co-sponsor, and to XULA one of our beloved institutional partners.

K4BL also hosted its fourth annual Black History in Louisiana Summer Workshop, building on our partnership with Xavier University. Our excursion this year to Baton Rouge brought us in direct connection with documents at archives and repositories across the city. We finished with our workshop and gathering with our Community Circle and Advisory Board, charting out the next phase of K4BL, building new strategies for sustainability.

The K4BL Community Team spent last fall supporting these same KCCAB members at events around Louisiana. Some of those events included the naming of Queen Dianne Honoré as a Louisiana Folklife Tradition Bearer, Phebe Hayes in her book launch at Octavia Books, participation in the Charles Deslondes Branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (current President, Malik Bartolomew, a KCCAB member), and presentations by Freddie Evans and Eva Baham at the 2025 ASALH in Atlanta, Georgia. Online celebrations of Denise Frazier, whose work with Jazz Generations New Orleans sparked joy all around the city and Kristina Kay Robinson, who released a short film in collaboration with Denisio Truitt and multiple publications including in the Katrina anniversary issue of Southern Cultures, also continued. Pick up Phebe Hayes , Were You There?: A Biography of Emma Wakefield-Paillet (University of Louisiana, 2025).

Last but not least, CONGRATULATIONS again to Keywords for Black Louisiana, awarded a Digital Projects Legacy Award from the American Studies Association’s Digital Humanities Caucus!!! Founding Digital Curation Fellow Ellie Palazzolo joined current Digital Curation Fellow Zaria El-Fil to accept the award.

Who Owns Black Data

Not far from New York, the mad genius Dr. Alex Gil (Yale) and the organizers of Who Owns Black Data, a Black Beyond Data collaboration, hosted their second convening—Who Owns Black Data II: The Past in Danger. WOBD II featured a slate of invited guests from the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana to DigBlack: The Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State University to the Puerto Rican Organization for the Performing Arts (PROPA), and closed with a stellar keynote panel conversation with Tamara Lanier (Author and Activist), Marisa Parham (University of Maryland), Alondra Nelson (Institute for Advanced Study) and Yeshimabeit Milner (Data for Black Lives), moderated by Black Beyond Data’s own Kim Gallon (Brown University). The knowledge we need now—right now.

We Live Language Lab Unites Baltimore Through Art and Culture

Back in Baltimore, the We Live Language (directed by Nadejda Webb, JHU), a Black Beyond Data ecosystem lab, partnered with African Diaspora Alliance, JHU, Goucher College and Morgan State University to host a series of evenings of film and conversation around the work of Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando. The screenings featured speakers like Angela Carroll, Dr. Amaka Okechukwu, Dr. Guadalupe García, and Sharayna A. Christmas.

Underwriting Souls Research Memorializes the Slave Trade

Across the pond, Alexandre White (JHU), director of Underwriting Souls, made his way to London for the unveiling of a historic marker acknowledging Lloyds of London’s role in underwriting the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The work of Underwriting Souls (available here and hosted by Sheridan Libraries) played a key role in the research that supported activists in securing this memorial to lives lost over capital and commodities.

Learn more about the plaque below:

Hip Hop Rx Enters its Flow State

Working across institutions in Indiana, New Orleans, California and beyond, HipHop Rx, directed by Pyar Seth (University of Notre Dame), brought sound, mind, and body together. HipHop Rx hosted a creative retreat, Flow-States, and supported FocusRite in filming a short documentary about the experience.

At Loyola University in New Orleans, Rayne Antoine of HipHop Rx hosted a music camp with Loyola students, bringing recording artists Deanté Hitchcock and LEALE into the studio with them.

The lab also continued to put pen to page, including a special issue on the Hip Hop South by Southern Cultures (Summer 2025) edited by lab member Corey J. Miles and featuring a piece by Pyar Seth. In 2025, Seth’s work also appeared in The Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships and Transforming Anthropology. Catch up on the faculty spotlight on Seth below.

Last, but not least—What We Published in 2025

• Ryan Cecil Jobson and Christen A. Smith, “Black Anthropology and Its Archives,” Transforming Anthropology 33, no. 2 (2025): 61–63, https://doi.org/10.1086/738166

• Pyar J. Seth, “Black Screens, Real Dreams: Love, Hip-Hop, and the Streaming Economy of Difference,” Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships 12, no. 1 (2025): 15–34.

• Sarah Bruno, Essah Diaz, Daniel Morales-Armstrong, Jessica Marie Johnson, “Introduction: Entre Aguas/Between the Waters,” Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (2025).

• Water Proof: Olas de Memoria, Centro Journal (2025) (Taller Entre Aguas special issue)

• Hip Hop South, Southern Cultures, (2025) (HipHop Rx Member Corey Miles, editor, Pyar Seth, contributor)

• The Community Health Informatics Data Lab, “Voices for Health Equity“, edited by Breanna Villareal and Clarissa Thorne, Brown University, (2025)

• Breanna Villareal. “Black Women, Pink Ribbons: Representation and Care to Fight Racial Disparities in Breast Cancer.” The Brown Journal of Medical Humanities 3, no. 1 (Spring 2025): 26-27

• Alex Gil’s Aimé Césaire and Brent Hayes Edwards, ............And the Dogs Were Silent/......Et Les Chiens Se Taisaient, trans. Alex Gil (Duke University Press, 2024) received Honorable Mention, 2025 Lois Roth Book Award, presented by the Modern Language Association

• Zophia Edwards, “Colonial States and Passive Revolutions: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago,” Critical Sociology, December 25, 2025, 08969205251398534, https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205251398534.

• Zophia Edwards, “W. E. B. Du Bois on the Logics of Settler Colonialism,” Sociological Forum 41, no. 1 (2026): 32–36, https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.70025.

• Zophia Edwards, Fueling Development: How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago (Duke University Press, 2025).

• Yomaira Figueroa and Nadejda Webb, “[Letter from the Editors] In a Time of War,” [Taller] Electric Marronage, October 4, 2025, https://www.electricmarronage.com/war/2025/10/2/letter-from-the-editors.

• Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, “NUEVAYol: Afterimages for the Diaspora,” CentroPR, August 13, 2025, https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/publications/nuevayol-afterimages-for-the-diaspora/.

• Daniel Morales-Armstrong, “Cimarrones, Rebels, and Plaintiffs: Strategies Enslaved Africans and Their Descendants Used to Resist Slavery in Puerto Rico (Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries),” Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (2025).

• Kiana González-Cedeño et al., “Forging Afro-Diasporic Bonds: Black Feminist Worldmaking After the Storm in the Greater Caribbean (1965-2017),” Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (2025).

• Yafrainy Familia, “Curating Transnational Feminist Solidarities in Born in Flames: Feminist Futures,” Meridians 24, no. 2 (2025): 357–78, https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-11864081.

• Lauren Klein, Meredith Martin, André Brock, Maria Antoniak, Melanie Walsh, Jessica Marie Johnson, Lauren Tilton, David Mimno, “Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research,” arXiv:2502.19190, preprint, arXiv, February 26, 2025, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2502.19190.

A Living Ecosystem

These celebrations barely scratch the surface of what we tackled, created, and dreamed up in 2025. And, yes, this “round up” of the 2025 year of LifexCode work is two months late!

But we deserve to celebrate what we’ve grown—and that is a we. The LifexCode guides, all ten of us, hail from big state schools and elite private ones, Catholic institutions and med schools. Assistant Director Nadejda Webb told me once: “LifexCode is a living ecosystem.”

And it is. LifexCode is a living, multi-institutional, international, beautiful, breathing entity, its Guides ready to hit the ground running when needed, its Vision & Practice sessions fortifying its members against toxins, its community and institutional partners infusing it with nutrients, preparing it for the coming hurricanes.

The keyword FORMATION is the last one of Campt’s keywords for us to explore. It comes right on time.

We are in formation. We aren’t going anywhere. We are just getting started.

More soon,

Jessica Marie Johnson

ps. Subscribe to this newsletter to follow us here and keep up with realtime updates on IG @life_x_code

Established in 2015 and expanded in 2019, TALLER ELECTRIC MARRONAGE (EM) began when a group of Black/Latina, queer, writers, and artists decided to plot points across their escape matrix. Inspired by the petit marronage of our ancestors, we steal away on the electric platform, share our journeys and offer what we find along the way. EM is the Winner of the 2020 Garfinkel Prize from the Digital Humanities Caucus of the American Studies Association and is part of the Diaspora Solidarties Lab Projects led by Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez and Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson.

Please join us on Dec. 12th for a virtual reading with [Taller] Electric Marronage Writers, as they share pieces from the new microdossier, “In a Time of War.”

Edited by Lead Editor Dr. Nadejda Jahi Webb and Co-Director Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez.

As shared in a letter from the editors, “In a time of war, our writers declare, ‘I want to live…look for me everywhere’ CM). From wartime Punjab to Bahia, ‘pedagogies of endurance’ (GK) remind us of what is possible, even as they contemplate the enclosures we collectively exist within. May this microdossier root the affective whirlwind of this moment. May we look to each other and know, we are still here. With names. With stories. With proof of lives lived. With survival at the fore. The writers underscore the truths: ‘War doesn’t bypass universities’ (KM) and mothering is a radical praxis that is laden with grief, fear, and hope: ‘we birth a guerrilla-war-like way of survival, a théâtre de résistance’ (SC).

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Join us to hear from writers Gabriel Pascua, Janet Arelis Quezada, danah alfailakawi, Dr. Kimberly Monroe, Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, Dr. Gurpreet Kaur and Cristina M, and experincd in each piece in full💐

Use the QR code [or this link] to register and receive the zoom link!

If you’re in San Juan for the annual American Studies Association conference scheduled for Nov. 20th - 22nd, check out the following panels featuring LifexCode members!

For more details, see our panel listing below and the ASA Program here.

• Thu, November 20, 9:45 to 11:15 am, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 203 (AV) | Sarah Bruno, Yomaira C Figueroa-Vasquez, Kiana González Cedeño, Jessica Marie Johnson, Yafrainy Familia, Chair: Nadejda Webb | Non-paper session, “Visioning Practice: Spaces of Hope and Labor”

• Fri, November 21, 9:45 to 11:15 am, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 204 (AV) | Rosa E. Ficek, Natalia Hernández Mejías, Natalia M. Betancourt Malavé, Anais Couvertier Garay, Lauren Prince, Sarah Bruno, Chair- Kiana González Cedeño| Roundtable Format, “Digital Solidarities: Archiving Caribbean Lives in the Face of Empire”

• Fri, November 21, 1:15 to 2:45 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 202-B (AV) | Kiana González Cedeño, Shantee Rosado, Melanie Rodríguez Vázquez, with comments by Isar Godreau | “Feeling Empire and Facing the Future: A Reckoning and Rupture”

• Fri, November 21, 4:45 to 6:15 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 204 (AV) | Aaron Katzeman, Gabrielle Tillenburg, Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez, Chair: Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez, with comments by Taína Caragol | Paper Session, “Islands, Invaded: Contemporary Art, Film, and U.S. Empire”

• Fri, November 21, 3:00 to 4:30 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 207 (AV) | Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Marie Cruz Soto, Cruz Soto, Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes, Aurora Santiago Ortiz, Chair: Marisol Lebron | Roundtable, “Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies Pt. 2: Resistance and Multimodal Avenues for Activism and Self-Determination”

• Fri, November 21, 4:45 to 6:15 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 207 (AV) | Amarilys Estrella, Paul Joseph Lopez Oro, Omaris Z. Zamora, Ashley Coleman Taylor, Moderator: Petra Rivera-Rideau, Chair: Yomaira C Figueroa-Vasquez| Roundtable Format, “15 years of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: Past and Future Directions”

• Sat, November 22, 9:45 to 11:15 am, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 103-A (AV) | Jonathan Toro, Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez, Adriana De Persia Colón | Constructed Paper Session, “Literary and Digital Puerto Rico”

• Sat, November 22, 1:15 to 2:45 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 207 (AV)| Petra Rivera-Rideau, Vanessa Díaz, Luis Rivera-Figueroa, Chair: Aurora Santiago Ortiz with comments by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo and Jade Power-Sotomayor | Roundtable, “DTMF: Bad Bunny and Sounds of Resistance in Puerto Rico”

• Sat, November 22, 4:45 to 6:15 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 208-C (Analog) | Julián Posada, Lauren Klein, Jessica Marie Johnson, Nadejda Webb, Chair: Nikko Stevens | Roundtable: “Imagining Computing After American Empire”

See also presentations from one of our seeded out labs, Taller Entre Aguas!

Congratulations to Keywords for Black Louisiana, winners of the 2025 American Studies Association Digital Humanities Caucus Digital Projects Award for Legacy Projects!!! Congratulations to Founding Director and Editor-in-Chief Jessica Marie Johnson and the K4BL Collective, past, present and future!!

Congratulations to the winner of the Digital Newcomer Award, Melanie Walsh! Thank you ASA!

Keywords for Black Louisiana is a collective of teachers, students, researchers, culture bearers, scholars, artists, and more building digital portals into histories of Africans and people of African descent along the Gulf Coast. Thank you to the National Historic Publications and Records Commission, Johns Hopkins University, JHU Sheridan Libraries, the Louisiana State Museum, the New Orleans Jazz Museum, the Amistad Research Center, the Midlo Center at UNO, the Historic New Orleans Collection, and all of our sponsors and collaborators, past and present, for your support for the work!!!!

Visit keywordsforblacklouisiana.com to learn more and find the links to our Document (docs.k4bl.org) and Story Sets (stories.k4bl.org)! K4BL is part of the LifexCode ecosystem (lifexcode.org).

Join us for a conversation with Mvskoke scholar and Indigenous digital humanist Dr. Laura Harjo (U. of Oklahoma) and an ecosystem celebration of lightning talks from Digitizing Caribbean Archives and The Open Boat Lab about on-going research across the ecosystem.

Dr. Harjo’s Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity won the 2021 On the Brinck Book Award. We encourage you to check it out beforehand if you can!

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When: Tues, Dec 2, 12-2 pm EST

Where: Gilman 308 & Zoom (QR code by request)

What: Dynamic conversations, w/ food and swag

We welcome you to COME IN Person if you can!