Archiving Resistance: Activating the Black Radical Tradition

UCSB receives scholars and activists from California and beyond to discuss archive as tools for liberation

How do we bring together a conversation about racism and misogyny at ‘home’, about Palestine, the DRC, and the recent rebellions of 'the Cockroaches', while recognizing our complicity or seeming powerlessness in confronting them? How may a look at the archaeologies of Black resistance help us to consequentially respond to these questions? How do we engage with archives other than through predatory practices of erasure and extractivist practices of selective remembrance? How do we read an archive against itself and how might we expand archival work from keeping records of a forgotten past to excavating the political lives of past struggles? Local communities, global partner organizations, archival practitioners, and activist scholars will engage with these and other questions during the two-day II. Cedric and Elizabeth Robinson Archive Conference to take place on October 9-10, 2026 at UC Santa Barbara. 

Named after Cedric and Elizabeth Robinson, and rooted in Black internationalism, the Robinson Archive Project is an initiative that aims to foster collaborations among scholars, activists, and communities fighting imperialism and forging liberatory futures at home and abroad. This year's conference theme, "Archiving Resistance: Activating the Black Radical Tradition," invites the UCSB community and the larger public to imagine together ways to respond to the challenges of resurging fascism in America and beyond using the tools and methods of the Black radical tradition. The event will feature plenary discussions, hands-on workshops, and roundtable discussions with teachers, scholars, and archivists committed to the work of liberation. For example, key plenaries on Friday (Oct 9) and Saturday (Oct 10) will bring into sharp focus the resurgence of fascism around the world, the geopolitical context of imperial rivalries and the US-Israeli war on the Middle East. As Mae Miller-Likhethe, the director of the Robinson Archive Initiative contends, “as global fascist movements gain momentum and attacks on higher education and historical preservation deepen, the stakes of learning from historical movements are incredibly high. Our goal with the conference is to learn from one another, to share and sharpen tools in our collective fight for a more just future.”

The Robinson Archive Project creates a living archive that uses participatory and community-based strategies to develop an international network of scholars and activists to carry out research, writing, and teaching centered on key topics encompassed in the Robinsons’ life work. The archive serves as an important anchor for the larger project and will enable global research, teaching, scholarship, and sociopolitical and cultural activism for future generations.

Registration to this year’s conference can be made through the Robinson Archive website. This year's conference will be hosted at the UCSB Library Special Research Collections and around campus.

Full Program