Brown & Slavery & Justice

Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice

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Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice

Brown’s Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice has become a global leader for research that is changing the way the world learns about legacies of slavery and the slave trade.

Speaker at the From Slave Ships to Black Lives Matter conference
CSSJ faculty, staff and student research and initiatives inform high-impact historical exhibitions, major film documentary projects and challenging curricula for high school students.
Founded in 2012, the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown is a hub of dynamic research on historical racial slavery and how its legacy shapes the contemporary world.

The center was established after a direct recommendation of the Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, which called on the University to “undertake a major research and teaching initiative on slavery and justice.” The Simmons Center has already become internationally recognized for its scholarship and engagement. 

A rich collection of Simmons Center research clusters, led by faculty, staff and students, confronts such disparate problems as human trafficking, mass incarceration in the United States and racial bias in medicine. Faculty, staff and student research and initiatives inform high-impact historical exhibitions, major film documentary projects and challenging curricula for high school students. And, the Center’s Global Curatorial Project regularly convenes influential slavery and justice scholars, curators and educators from across the globe.

Visit the Simmons Center Online

While this page introduces content from the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, follow the links to visit the CSSJ's website and learn more about the center's history, work and featured projects.

History of the Simmons Center

The Simmons Center has positioned itself both within the intellectual landscape of Brown and also in relation to the few other centers devoted to the study of slavery that exist around the world.

The Simmons Center's Work

The center’s work comprises a set of research clusters, projects, seminars and public engagement initiatives that propel new perspectives on historical slavery.

Featured Simmons Center Projects

Global Curatorial Project

An exhibition and curatorial project, jointly led by the Simmons Center and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, explores the global interconnectedness of the transatlantic slave trade and illuminates an alternative view of the history of global modernity.

Historical Injustice and Democracy

A research cluster led jointly by the Simmons Center and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs confronts how the historical injustices of colonialism and racial slavery were instrumental in the making of the modern world.

Unfinished Conversations

The Simmons Center and Brown’s John Hay Library are working with scholars and museums across the globe to create the world’s largest collection of oral histories on racial slavery and colonialism.

Race, Slavery, Colonialism and Capitalism

A research cluster co-led by the Simmons Center and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam explores the way that race, racial slavery and colonialism have shaped global capitalism, changing scholars’ understanding of world history and development.

News About the Simmons Center

Questions for B. Anthony Bogues

Created on recommendation of the 2006 Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, the new Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice will expand upon the work of that committee, creating a space for student and faculty research and public discussion of the history and legacies of these issues. Here, inaugural director B. Anthony Bogues shares his vision for the Center.

Bogues to direct Slavery and Justice Center

B. Anthony Bogues, the Harmon Family Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, has been named inaugural director of the University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Creation of the center was among the recommendations made in the Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.