Since 2021, the project has recorded over 200 hours of oral history interviews with the communities most impacted by the legacies of racial slavery and colonialism.

The Unfinished Conversations initiative is focused on exploring the question 
“How Slavery and Colonialism Shaped this Place” by establishing new collections of oral histories which explore the lived experiences and historical memories of enslaved Africans and their descendants. The project allows for communities around the world to share their histories in their own voice.

The archive includes interviews from communities in Dakar and the Freedom Villages of Senegal, Liverpool, United Kingdom, Africatown, United States of America, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Capetown and the Groot Constantia Wine Estate of South Africa, neighborhoods surrounding Brussels, Belgium, with communities in Kinshasa and the Kimbanguist Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and with communities in Kingston, Jamaica as well as the Charles Town Maroons.

Digitally archived at the John Hay Library, the Unfinished Conversation Series is a living repository composed of more than 150 interviews that have taken place in nine languages across four continents.

It draws inspiration from a documentary by black British artist John Akomfrah on the black British/Jamaican radical theorist Stuart Hall, who argued that the question of cultural identity is an “ever-unfinished conversation.”

Altogether, this oral history project was an experiment in collaborative curatorial practice informed by decolonial approaches that gave due respect to participants’ sensibilities and political subjectivities.

The UC project is primarily organized by the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice (Simmons Center) in close collaboration with the John Hay Library at Brown University, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC), Iziko Slave Lodge Museum, South Africa; the Royal Museum of Central Africa, Belgium; Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, Senegal; International Museum of Slavery, United Kingdom; and researchers in Brazil.