New center at SDSU to shape the future of research across the African diaspora

For many years, Taharka Adé, associate professor of Africana studies at San Diego State University, has studied various approaches to African history and culture, including Afrocentricity and W.E.B. Du Bois’s early 20th century exploration of the African World. 

Ade’s own more recent African World Antecedent Methodology examines the historical and cultural foundations connecting African peoples and their experiences.

That research led to the founding of the new Africana Research & Cultural Renaissance Center, housed on the third floor of the College of Arts and Letters building. The opening of the new hub for recovering African histories, tracing cultural continuities across the diaspora, and bringing Africana research into public life, was celebrated in a reception yesterday.

“The center researches, preserves and restores African diasporic cultural knowledge while advancing cultural justice and cultural property rights,” Adé said. 

Organized around three pillars — cultural restoration, cultural rectification and cultural property — Adé envisions the center as both a research hub and an active cultural space, including rotating displays of African and African diasporic books, maps, artwork, textiles, reproductions and other materials.

The new center is one of three initiatives funded under the College of Arts and Letters’ R-Next Initiative, which seeks to reimagine SDSU's new R1 status by fostering socially responsive research that extends beyond the academy. 

“The center exemplifies how the humanities and social sciences can help us understand — and improve — the communities we serve,” said Dean Todd Butler. “I'm impressed by the range of community support the center has already received, and I'm looking forward to what it will contribute in the future.”

The first major initiative will make patterns of African cultural continuity visible in new ways. The ArcGIS Cultural Patterns project will combine interactive maps, timelines and layered visualizations to trace how cultural knowledge moved from West and Central Africa across the Atlantic and throughout the Americas.

Researchers will integrate archival sources, oral histories, genealogical records and evidence related to foodways, language, music, spirituality, naming, kinship and community life.

The resulting public-facing digital atlas will allow users to follow migration routes, compare practices across locations and time periods, and identify cultural continuities and transformations that written records alone may not reveal.

In addition, a student research journal will debut in the near future. “Weber Review: Student Research in Africana Studies” named for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, SDSU professor emerita and co-founder of the Africana studies department, will give students a platform to share their work.

Adé joined SDSU as an assistant professor of Africana studies in 2021.

“The Africana Research and Cultural Renaissance Center is more than just a new space — it's a statement about where Africana Studies at SDSU is headed,” said Sureshi Jayawardene, associate professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies. “Dr. Adé's vision for this center is exactly the kind of bold, unapologetic, and community-rooted research that our discipline was built for. This center is a milestone for our department.”

The work reflects the College of Arts and Letters’ emphasis on connecting research to the world beyond the classroom, using critical inquiry and cultural understanding to engage complex social questions.  

The center also builds on the Africana Studies Collection, established in the University Library in 2023 under Adé’s leadership. Gloria Rhodes, outreach and diversity initiatives librarian and Africana Studies resource librarian, is a founding board member of the center.

While the library collection created a dedicated home for materials central to Africana Studies, Adé said the new center will help activate those resources through more research and engagement.

Community partnership is equally important. Community members will help identify priorities, contribute knowledge and ensure histories are represented with accuracy, dignity and care. 

One such local community member is Alexis Dixon, CEO of Mediation Solutions International, and a founding board member of the center. 

“When we know our history, we can better understand the conditions that shaped who we have become,” Dixon said. “Working alongside Dr. Adé, this center gives our community that knowledge, not simply as history, but as something lived and relevant. Understanding our histories helps us shape the world we share and the future we create.” 

The center is also working with Black and African organizations in San Diego and nationally, as well as African Ancestry, a genetic tracing company that has connected more than one million people across the African diaspora with their present-day African countries and ethnic groups of origin.

Adé hopes the center ultimately becomes a trusted space where scholars, students and communities build lasting projects together and where research produces tangible change.

“The three pillars are not symbolic language or simple platitudes,” Adé said. “They are a framework for producing research that contributes to real political, social and economic change in the communities whose histories and cultural knowledge we study.”