Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Research

The session, Echoes of Tomorrow: How Afrofuturism Shapes Music will showcase the portrayal of afrofuturism in music across different scenes and time periods. Different aspects of sample selection, sound selection, and sound design in afrofuturistic music can create soundscapes that can have a feeling of wonder. Afrofuturistic music from a wide number of genres will be discussed in order to showcase the unique stories and soundscapes.The workshop will also go over basic sound selection and design in order to have an interactive beat making experience.

By exploring the intersection of game design and social justice, this presentation will demonstrate how storytelling can be used to challenge dominant narratives and amplify marginalized voices. Learn about our research where Black high school students create games that draw from their own experiences and community knowledge. I will demonstrate the core principles of the program and share lesson plan examples. As part of the session, we’ll play a short game and collaborate to design a game that reflects our collective identities.

This interactive session empowers participants to explore their personal narratives as a tool for self-identification, agency, and self-determination. Through guided reflection, participants will uncover the power of their lived experiences, articulate their identities on their own terms, and harness their voices to declare their multifaceted nature. This session provides a supportive space to reclaim, redefine, and share our distinctive selves with confidence, agency, and unapologetic assurance.

Part Two: 11:30AM - 12PM

• Women in WaSH: Focus on Taking Action in Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM)
  Dr. Angela Allen, CNR/FER/ Dir of Env Tech & Mgmt/Co-Dir Env Sci; Gislene Aparecida dos Santos, PhD, University of Sao Paulo; Tadeu Fabrício Malheiros, PhD, University of Sao Paulo; and Kate Burningham, PhD, University of Surrey
  The importance of understanding the natural passage in a young girl’s life from childhood to  adulthood is becoming more prioritized in today’s society. Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) allows us to explore information surrounding vital categories in areas such as proper education, accessibility, economic liberation, and policy changes in the area of menstruation hygiene management (MHM).  Limited study, however, in the locations of North Carolina and Brazil demonstrates the need to  investigate educational awareness and disseminate information properly. Organized online workshops aimed to bring knowledge from research and efforts that integrated students from high school to college from across countries.

• Black in the Stacks: Afrofuturism and the Future of Libraries
  Brionna Johnson, Princeton University Library
  Libraries are often seen as spaces of books, quiet, and tradition—but what about the stories and people not always associated with them? What happens when we reimagine libraries through the lens of Afrofuturism? This session explores the history of Black librarianship, the variety of roles within the profession, and where Black folks belong in this evolving field. Together, we’ll reflect on the intersections of identity, representation, and the transformative potential of Black voices in library spaces. Let’s envision bold, inclusive possibilities for the stacks of tomorrow!

• Storytelling from the Trenches to the Kitchen Table
  Kaitlan C. Farrior, CHASS, NC State University
  This digital poster explores how storytelling from familiar spaces—kitchen tables, urban alleys, rural porches—represents a vital form of Afrofuturistic scholarship. By drawing from community narratives and ancestral wisdom, it highlights the transformative power of "everyday research." Guided by Sankofa and Ubuntu principles, this presentation centers lived experiences as revolutionary praxis.

• Biomimicry & Black American Fashion: Nature-Inspired Fashion for Human Health and Wellness 
  Rue Tshamala, University of Georgia; Dr. Sha'Mira Covington, Assistant Professor in Fashion, The University of Georgia
  This research examines the intersection of biomimicry and Black American fashion, highlighting how environment-inspired designs can promote human health and wellness. Through multi-case studies and visual network analysis, the study maps connections between design elements, cultural narratives, and ecological contexts. It addresses the lack of representation of Indigenous and Black perspectives in mainstream sustainability discourse. By analyzing fashion in urban, suburban, and rural Black communities, this work demonstrates the importance of cultural and environmental integration in creating sustainable, health-promoting fashion, contributing to a more inclusive and holistic approach to sustainability and health equity.

• Reimaging African American agriculture through Afro-Futurism
  Alejandro Ibrahim, Department of History, NC State University
  Traditionally African Americans have been practitioners of agriculture. Despite this African Americans make up less than 2% of farmers in the United States. African Americans also have the highest rate of food insecurity. In the 21st century agriculture among African Americans must have an afrofuturist touch to be successful. This can ensure sustainable food systems. Examples of this can be through adopting farming methods such as agroecology and supporting urban agriculture. This presentation seeks to connect history to the present struggle of black food justice.

• Wellness X Tech X Art 
  Alina V. Roach, NC State College of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Envision you are a student in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, or Mathematics (STEAM)—juggling high expectations while silently struggling with stress and burnout. For many, this is reality. This research creatively connects to Sankofa, addressing past challenges with an afrofuturistic vision. It uses stress response hierarchies and community interviews, embodying Ubuntu and Harambee by engaging diverse communities. Through interactive breathing techniques and findings, the presentation highlights futuristic applications, strategic initiatives across colleges, and a career wellness book. This work integrates wellness with technical research, honoring the mind, body, and spirit, and emphasizes "Rest as Revolution" for sustainable wellness in STEAM.

Keynote Speaker: Dasan AhanuPoet, Emcee, Cultural Organizer, Playwright, Performance Artist, Lecturer, Educator


A self-described introvert with a very public profession, Dasan Ahanu is an award-winning poet, cultural organizer, performing artist, and scholar. He is a Southern storyteller who uses stories to deepen our understanding and awareness of what’s happening around us. Dasan is a visiting lecturer at UNC-Chapel Hill, an alumnus of Harvard University’s Nasir Jones Fellowship, and North Carolina’s 2023 Piedmont Laureate for poetry. He notes that creative artistry is embedded in the fabric of North Carolina and shows an incredible commitment to his home state. He has served various artistic leadership roles and consistently reinvests his talents. A respected recording artist, Dasan has collaborated with many Jazz, Soul, and Hip-Hop artists in North Carolina. He has published extensively, performed nationwide, and authored six poetry collections. Dasan has been active in poetry slam, participating in regional and national competitions as a founding member and coach of the Bull City Slam Team. He is a builder who works with organizations and institutions to develop effective arts strategies that enhance their work in the community.

• Alumni Nasir Jones Fellow – Hip Hop Archive at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University
• Resident Artist – St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation/Hayti Heritage Center
• Managing Director – Black Poetry Theatre
• Member – Black Jedi Zulus
• Founder/Coordinator/Coach – Jambalaya Soul Slam/Bull City Slam Team

We are the Popular: Black Stories as Cultural Drivers

This keynote explores the profound impact of Black stories on popular culture. From music and film to fashion and social media, Black narratives have shaped mainstream entertainment, redefined cultural trends, and driven social movements. The talk will highlight how Black life and experiences continue to provide the world a unique and dynamic sense of understanding, presence, and capacity. We know that the world watches, listens to, and engages with Black culture—often without diving due credit to the brilliance displayed. It also imitates, appropriates, and commodifies Black brilliance and activity as well. The value is inescapable and undeniable. In recognition of this fact, this keynote is an acknowledgement that Black stories don’t just influence pop culture—they are the popular!

Unfortunately, this session is canceled for today's event.


Black women farmers comprise just 0.65% of all agricultural producers in North Carolina, yet their voices offer insights into resilience, representation, and advocacy within agriculture. This session highlights findings from a digital storytelling project centering the experiences of 10 Black women farmers. Attendees will explore how ancestral roots and a commitment to future generations drive these farmers despite systemic challenges. Through storytelling, this research disrupts conventional notions of scholarship, offering a participant-led approach to equity and inclusion in agriculture. The session will engage attendees in reflecting on the power of lived experiences to inspire policy, representation, and future research.

Unfortunately, this session is canceled for today's event.


In 2009, Kid Cudi released Man on the Moon: The End of the Day, an autobiographical concept album that explores Cudi’s depression, anxiety, and isolation. Within the narrative, Cudi uses recreational drugs “escape” from depression; the transcendental drug trip as mental stimulation simulating space travel. Cudi’s concept album works in conversation with Black national identity and racist drug wars.
Cudi adopts escapist imagery from Pan African nationalism and Afrofuturism, reimagining escape as a psychedelic drug trip. This paper examines contemporary practices of escapism through hip-hop music that satirizes the racism in nationalism, the space race, and the war on drugs.

An Island for an Exiled is a multimedia installation exploring cultural estrangement and sacred exile through Afrofuturistic aesthetics. Combining stop-motion animation, photography, live performance, and immersive environmental elements, the work interrogates identity, memory, and speculative futures.

This presentation invites participants to explore the significance of home and place in shaping Black identities. Through interactive mapping exercises and storytelling, attendees will share their connections to meaningful spaces, discussing how these locations influence their experiences and sense of belonging. This session aligns with the symposium’s theme by transforming personal narratives into collective knowledge, illuminating the diverse ways Black communities navigate their environments and the cultural significance of these spaces.

The Sky People is a mixed-media art exhibit by ANU Life Global Ministries that explores creation through the lens of Afro-Shemetic Futurism. Rooted in ancient narratives from Sumerian, Hebrew, and Babylonian traditions, the presentation combines paintings, digital art, music, literature, and film to reimagine creation as a dynamic and evolving concept. Featuring tools like Hebrew language, indigenous storytelling, and interactive multimedia, The Sky People invites participants to engage with perspectives of creation that bridge esoteric, present, and futuristic contexts. Immersive and thought-provoking, this exhibit merges cultural heritage with cutting-edge innovation, offering a profound exploration of identity and possibility.

The Rest & Reflect Lounge: A Wellness 
Space Step away from the hustle and bustle of the symposium and immerse yourself in a space designed for rest, reflection, and quiet creativity. Whether you need a moment to process ideas from a session, connect with others in a low-pressure setting, or simply recharge before the next session.

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Coloring as Meditation: Choose from any of the provided designs. As you color, reflect on the ideas you've encountered throughout the symposium or enjoy a moment of calm.

Curated Playlists for Symposium: Music has the power to shape our mood, spark inspiration, and offer a sense of peace. Visit our listening station and explore curated playlists designed to help you reflect, center yourself, and process the insights of the symposium. Use the prompts below for reflection.

Journaling for Insight & Integration: The symposium is full of powerful ideas, but what resonates most with you? Use this quiet journaling space to put your thoughts on paper, process your experiences, and set intentions.


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#PassTheMicYouth is a multimedia Extension program that amplifies youth voices, highlighting their civic and community engagement while providing practitioners with tools to teach social impact storytelling. Aligned with Afro-diasporic ideas of community knowledge, storytelling, and intergenerational engagement, the program transforms everyday experiences into agents of change. From TEDxYouth@ChavisWay to Pass the Mic Camp, our initiatives showcase youth-led research and storytelling. This session features an interactive community poem activity and shares research on the program's impact, inspiring attendees to uplift the familiar stories that shape our collective understanding.

This study examines the intersection of Sankofa, Afrofuturism, and womanism through storytelling within the African diaspora. Rooted in the Akan principle of Sankofa, which emphasizes learning from the past to navigate the present and future, storytelling is explored as a tool for preserving cultural memory and imagining new possibilities. Integrating Afrofuturism and womanism, the study highlights how Black women use narratives to resist oppression and empower their communities. By analyzing personal and communal stories, this research underscores storytelling’s role in identity, resilience, and transformation, offering insights into its cultural and political significance for shaping inclusive futures.

This presentation unpacks the creative process of three Black scholars using dissertation data from Black leaders and families to develop a stage play with three vignettes and community dialogue. After conducting a qualitative study on the relationship between the University of Georgia and its surrounding Black communities, we engaged in a reflective process rooted in Endarkened Feminist Epistemology. We prayed over participants’ words, revisited narratives, and identified three key themes. To honor the rich data, we condensed the stories and developed a written stage play that centered participant voices, aiming to make the findings accessible and impactful for the community.

If you want to learn more about TRIO Collegiate Programs, please contact Wanya Ward (wtward3@ncsu.edu)!

This teach-in, facilitated by NC State researchers and librarians, will center the concept of Sankofa for participants to learn, share, and imagine new practices of archival storytelling. Facilitators will outline different approaches in personal, community, and institutional settings and will provide participants with tools to consider how to preserve their stories and artifacts by donating to or creating their own archives. In the spirit of Ubuntu, facilitators will work alongside community members to engage with questions about how this type of memory work can situate our lived experiences by drawing on the past and present to imagine the future.

The Sistas in the Salon Sista Circle provides a humanizing, authentic, and community-centered space that centers on Black women's experiences, knowledge, and healing through interactive dialogue and creative expression. By reimagining the traditional academic conference format through the culturally rooted tradition of a hair salon-inspired Sister Circle, this presentation embodies the symposium's commitment to innovative, holistic learning and knowledge production.

The Rest & Reflect Lounge: A Wellness 
Space Step away from the hustle and bustle of the symposium and immerse yourself in a space designed for rest, reflection, and quiet creativity. Whether you need a moment to process ideas from a session, connect with others in a low-pressure setting, or simply recharge before the next session.

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Coloring as Meditation: Choose from any of the provided designs. As you color, reflect on the ideas you've encountered throughout the symposium or enjoy a moment of calm.

Curated Playlists for Symposium: Music has the power to shape our mood, spark inspiration, and offer a sense of peace. Visit our listening station and explore curated playlists designed to help you reflect, center yourself, and process the insights of the symposium. Use the prompts below for reflection.

Journaling for Insight & Integration: The symposium is full of powerful ideas, but what resonates most with you? Use this quiet journaling space to put your thoughts on paper, process your experiences, and set intentions.


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Rhetorical Healing: Using Black English to Tell and Document Stories presentation will incorporate the history of Black English, the reasons why Black English should be considered a language, and how revolutionizing Black English as an inclusive language within storytelling art, literature, and articles will engage rhetorical healing needed for afrofuturism. Ultimately, Black English is a part of afrofuturism.

The Cyher at The Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship features poets, storytellers, dancers, movement workers, artists and more to share the history of diasporic storytelling.

The Storytelling CypherRooted in the tradition of the cypher in hip-hop—where artists gather in a circle to share, build, and riff off each other—this Storytelling Cypher is a dynamic space where narratives flow, voices rise, and stories take shape in a shared rhythm.

Storytelling has always been central to Black traditions, from the griots of West Africa to the oral histories passed down in kitchens, on porches, and in barbershops. It’s in the way we remix the past with the present. We even see this is the art of sampling, how we turn memory into rhythm, struggle into poetry, and everyday life into legend. This cypher brings together storytellers of all forms—spoken word artists, poets, musicians, scholars, dancers, keepers of ancestral wisdom to share, respond, and build a collective narrative.

With this year’s theme, "Storytelling from the Familiar," we honor the ways Black communities have used storytelling as a tool for resistance, remembrance, and research. Whether through verse, song, movement, testimony, or improvisation, this is a space to listen, bear witness, and contribute to the living archive of our experiences.

Come ready to share or simply absorb the energy. In this circle, every voice matters, every rhythm connects, and every story adds to the collective heartbeat of our community.

We present “A MAGIC Tour of Mitchelville”, a research project being developed by faculty and students in NC State’s MADTech department in collaboration with Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, an inspiring Gullah-Geechee heritage site on Hilton Head Island, SC. This presentation will show student prototypes done last summer to develop an interpretive scene of the new ghosted structures in the park that feature digital simulations of Gullah elder interviews, and current field research to bring NC State students to Hilton Head Island to collaborate with high-school students in the Modeling our Ancestors to Generate Influence and Change (MAGIC) docent program.

Everyone can be a rhetorician! In this 20 minute community conversation, participants will learn about Black Autistic Rhetoric and engage with materials from a developing community-led virtual archive.

This presentation connects the sociohistorical roots of Black health and wellness to current challenges while envisioning a future of health equity where Black communities thrive. Grounded in critical health, and social justice frameworks, this hybrid format blends a brief lecture and interactive “Musical Research Tables,” participants will explore historical health inequities, ethical dilemmas, and the importance of “safe” online and offline spaces. Facilitated by the Black Health Lab, this session fosters collaboration and discussion regarding strategies to advance systemic change and inspire attendees to champion health and wellness in their work.

Intergenerational Conversations Panel (hosted by the Black Graduate Student Association)

Join us for an interactive panel celebrating the diverse experiences of African Americans at NCSU. Featuring students, alumni, and faculty/staff from different phases of life, panelists will share their journeys through NCSU, the resources that supported them, and how they navigated transitions and significant changes. This open discussion provides a space to connect across generations, gain valuable perspectives, and explore shared experiences within the African American community at NCSU. Ask your question here: https://app.sli.do/event/rq9f5bRs5YH6QLZtKiVFqA

The Rest & Reflect Lounge: A Wellness 
Space Step away from the hustle and bustle of the symposium and immerse yourself in a space designed for rest, reflection, and quiet creativity. Whether you need a moment to process ideas from a session, connect with others in a low-pressure setting, or simply recharge before the next session.

*********************
Coloring as Meditation: Choose from any of the provided designs. As you color, reflect on the ideas you've encountered throughout the symposium or enjoy a moment of calm.

Curated Playlists for Symposium: Music has the power to shape our mood, spark inspiration, and offer a sense of peace. Visit our listening station and explore curated playlists designed to help you reflect, center yourself, and process the insights of the symposium. Use the prompts below for reflection.

Journaling for Insight & Integration: The symposium is full of powerful ideas, but what resonates most with you? Use this quiet journaling space to put your thoughts on paper, process your experiences, and set intentions.


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Speculative fiction challenges traditional notions of mimetic or “realistic” representation found in literary fiction. Consequently, speculative fiction can be useful in challenging norms because it aims to disrupt reality. Caribbean Speculative Fiction, sometimes defined as speculative fiction written by authors living in or originating from the Caribbean or featuring Caribbean protagonists, often invokes Caribbean folklore, blending the familiar with the innovative. This presentation explores how Caribbean Speculative Fiction empowers writers to reimagine the worlds they know while offering insightful perspectives on culture, history, and possibility, even if those worlds are not necessarily “better.”

This presentation will highlight the non-linear, intergenerational interrogation & narrative of first-generation Nigerian-Cameroonian-American Afumbom Okosun illustrating how our various forms of communication - specifically in the American South - connects African Diasporan people from all over the world. How can we re-claim, re-imagine & re-prioritize what our collective “native tongues” are as African diasporan people via the culture we create? How do black languages such as AAVE, pidgin English & “Creole” serve as anchors for how we connect with our lineages, past, present & future? In what ways are our collective liberation tied to the new languages we design, current language we refine and old languages we remember?

A celebratory closing to The Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship will feature the communal dance traditions of diasporic people. Join to learn popular and traditional line dances while learning the history of Black social dances at the intersection of Black movements and freedom projects.

Networking Reception at the Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship

Join us as we conclude the 2025 Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship with an engaging networking reception, designed to foster meaningful connections among NC State students, alumni, faculty, staff, and professionals from the local area.
This event brings together individuals passionate about building community, mentoring future leaders, and sharing knowledge. Our goal is to create a collaborative space for connection, learning, and inspiration.
What to Expect:

• A delicious dinner
• Fun and interactive networking opportunities
• A short and insightful panel discussion featuring professionals sharing their career journeys and networking tips

Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your network, gain valuable insights, and connect with a vibrant community of changemakers.


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Registration