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Living Archives, Moving Tides: Black Feminist Caribbean Thought
From left to right: Dr. Ronald Cummings, Dr. Nalini Mohabir, Dr. Merle Collins, Marlihan Lopez, Dr. Laurie Lambert, and Tesfa Peterson.
On April 23rd 2026, the Simone de Beauvoir Institute and Caribbean Studies Working Group held the "Living Archives, Moving Tides: Black Feminist Caribbean Thought" Symposium honoring the work of Dr. Merle Collins.
The event included panel discussions featuring Dr. Merle Collins (Professor Emerita, University of Maryland), Dr. Ronald Cummings (McMaster University), Dr. Laurie Lambert (Fordham University), Peter Carlton Antoine (The Institute for People’s Enlightenment), Tesfa Peterson (PhD Candidate, Concordia University), Dr. Nalini Mohabir (Concordia University), and Ms. Rohna Banfield-Cox and the sixth-grade students of Holy Innocents School (LaDigue, Grenada).
This symposium emerged from an ongoing commitment to think critically and collectively about diaspora as a site of knowledge production, a geography of struggle, and a space where Black feminist praxis and thought have long intervened against the violence of colonialism, racial capitalism, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression. Black feminist Caribbean thought does not simply respond to these conditions—it generates its own analytic frameworks, methodologies, and possibilities for reworlding.
We hope to continue participating in organizing events that foster conversations that move across disciplines and geographies, and that center the knowledge-making practices of communities who’ve historically been erased and excluded from academic spaces.
We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to Dr. Nalini Mohabir and Tesfa Peterson and the Caribbean Studies Working Group for trusting us to come on board as organizers. We would also like to thank our sponsors: Reseau quebecois en etudes feministes, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies and Culture, the Black Perpectives Office, the Office of Community Engagement, the Grenadian Association and the Department of Geography, Planning and the Environment, whose support has made this symposium possible. Finally, we’d also thank Nigel Thomas and the folks at Logos Reading for their invaluable contributions to this event.