Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Black Roots: Grounded and Growing Toward Collective Futures is a conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Design presented by the Black Student Union (formerly African American Student Union) and Africa GSD. This event investigates the Black praxes of making space, taking space, and creating “tools for living” through three interconnected themes: Black theologies, Black ecologies, and Black geographies. It explores the complex relationships between belief systems, environments, and lands that shape Black communities across the diaspora. Design serves as both terrain and a tool to explore lineage, land, and lore as intertwined forces shaping our communities. Through keynote panels, workshops, performances, and creative exchanges, the conference critically examines histories of migration, displacement, and resilience in the context of ongoing political and environmental crises. Through dialogue and creative expression, Black Roots foregrounds how Black spatial practices shape, and are shaped by, resistance, resilience, and regeneration.
Opening Address
Panel: Ancestral Fabrications: Crafting Collective Memory
Moderated by Imani Day
00:00 Conference Opening Address
12:31 Panel Introduction
18:24 Presentation by Euneika Rogers-Sipp (aka NDGO)
37:03 Presentation by Ifé Franklin
01:00:57 Presentation by Ashia Ajani
01:18:23 Panel Discussion
Black Roots: Grounded and Growing Toward Collective Futures is a conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Design presented by the Black Student Union (formerly African American Student Union) and Africa GSD. This event investigates the Black praxes of making space, taking space, and creating “tools for living” through three interconnected themes: Black theologies, Black ecologies, and Black geographies. It explores the complex relationships between belief systems, environments, and lands that shape Black communities across the diaspora. Design serves as both terrain and a tool to explore lineage, land, and lore as intertwined forces shaping our communities. Through keynote panels, workshops, performances, and creative exchanges, the conference critically examines histories of migration, displacement, and resilience in the context of ongoing political and environmental crises. Through dialogue and creative expression, Black Roots foregrounds how Black spatial practices shape, and are shaped by, resistance, resilience, and regeneration.
Opening Address
Panel: Ancestral Fabrications: Crafting Collective Memory
Moderated by Imani Day
00:00 Conference Opening Address
12:31 Panel Introduction
18:24 Presentation by Euneika Rogers-Sipp (aka NDGO)
37:03 Presentation by Ifé Franklin
01:00:57 Presentation by Ashia Ajani
01:18:23 Panel Discussion
