DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER, COALITION OF DIASPORIC AFRICANS

Dr. Eric Kyere is an Associate Professor of Social Work and Adjunct Professor of Africana Studies at Indiana University. Eric is a transdisciplinary scholar and draws on social science and humanities to integrate historical data with social science research methods.

He applies collective memory and historical and structural perspectives to explore how we collectively embody and enact unjust and harmful practices of our collective past to (re)produce hierarchy-based epistemic and affective structures that alter our shared humanity to sustain inequalities. His work also contributes to practices of epistemic and relational repair through reinterpretation of our histories toward collective efforts to engage in reparative future.

That is a future where structures and practices of violence rooted in slavery and colonial capital imaginaries are addressed for the collective. Such collective rethink is critical to reconstruct futures that support healthy relations with the self, the collective, and the natural environment in ways that support our thriving together.

Dr. Kyere’s transatlantic work and experiences have shown that when contextual distinctions are accounted for, the way slavery and colonialism, and other forms of past violence accumulate into our present and are projected into the future implicates all of us, beyond victims and perpetrator binaries, but in differentiated ways. Therefore, our collective understanding of the relations among slavery, colonialism and ongoing formation of whiteness relative to epistemology and our shared humanity is essential to collectively re-construct our futures in reparative fashion.