#IAS_NUQ Roundtable
Northwestern University in Qatar
Education City, Qatar +974 4454 5100
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Supported by the #IAS_NUQ Conference and Workshop Grant, this roundtable discussion interrogates the legacy of the late Black radical theorist Cedric J. Robinson and explores how his work speaks to questions of resistance, solidarity, and liberation in the Global South. Featuring insights from several individuals who worked closely with Robinson, the roundtable invites the broader NU-Q community to rethink the global dimensions of Black radical thought and its enduring power to envision a world beyond domination.
Elizabeth Peters-Robinson has been a community media activist, advocate, and producer for more than 40 years at the local, national, and international levels, including her current programs, No Alibis and Third World News Review, and her work with AMARC (World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters). As a journalist and Arab American, she has particularly attempted to provide corrective information about the Middle East for listeners and viewers. While the seeds of her political commitments might have been planted when she witnessed inequities as a high school student, they blossomed and matured as a consequence of her relationship with her life partner, Cedric J. Robinson, and the world he opened to her. She occasionally writes, frequently broadcasts, and has mentored hundreds of broadcasters and other people. She is convinced that every voice is a "radio voice" and that another world is possible and necessary.
Yousuf Al-Bulushi teaches in the Department of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He works at the intersection of political theory, global political economy, African and African diaspora studies, urban geography, critical theories of space, and social movements in Africa. His book, Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), explores how shack dwellers in contemporary South Africa are confronting the persistent legacy of spatial segregation. He is currently working on three research projects: an edited collection (with Damien Sojoyner and Geo Maher) offering an internationalist account of the contemporary relevance of Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America; an intellectual history and geography of "the Dar es Salaam school" in Tanzania from the 1960s–1980s; and a global genealogy of the idea of racial capitalism. He is a faculty hub member of MIR, a member of the editorial collective for the journal Antipode, a contributing editor for the journal Transforming Anthropology, and a member of the Critical Theory Advisory Committee at UC Irvine.
Marcela Pizarro Coloma is a lecturer in journalism and cultural theory at Goldsmiths, University of London, whose research focuses on journalism from the Global South. She worked as an international journalist for 20 years, mostly at Al Jazeera English on the channel's media critique show, “The Listening Post.” Her reports and documentaries focused on the geopolitics and history of media around the world. Marcela has made films on Third Cinema, revolutionary archives, and counter-cultural media globally, as well as films about the reporting by prisoners in solitary confinement in the United States and radio broadcasts by patients in psychiatric wards in Argentina. Her animated films showcase the lives and works of towering intellectual figures, including Stuart Hall and Edward Said, and her most recent project on the Black Radical Tradition (funded by a research grant from Northwestern University in Qatar). Her Ph.D. (University of London, 2004) was on the work of one of Latin America's most important cultural theorists, Nelly Richard.
Richard Georges is a writer of essays, fiction, and three collections of poetry. His most recent book, Epiphaneia (Out-Spoken, 2019), won the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and his first book, Make Us All Islands (Shearsman, 2017), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second book, Giant (Platypus, 2018), was highly commended by the Forward Prizes and longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize. Richard is a recipient of a fellowship from the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study (STIAS) and has been listed or nominated for several other prizes, including the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. He is a founding editor of Moko, an online publication focused on Caribbean art and literature. In 2020, Richard was appointed the first Virgin Islands Poet Laureate. He works in higher education and lives on Tortola with his wife and children.
Steven Osuna is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach. He received his Ph.D. in sociology with an emphasis in Black Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his M.A. and B.A. in Chicana/o Studies from California State University, Los Angeles. He is a scholar of racism and political economy, globalization, transnationalism, immigration, and policing and criminalization. His scholarship appears in journals such as Ethnicities, Race & Class, American Quarterly, Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literature, and Emancipations, and in edited volumes such as U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance (University of Arizona, 2017) and Futures of Black Radicalism (Verso, 2017). Steven was born and raised in Echo Park, Los Angeles, and is the son of Mexican and Salvadoran working-class immigrants. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Homies Unidos–Los Angeles.
Greg Burris is an associate professor in residence of visual communication at Northwestern University in Qatar and the author of The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Temple University, 2019).
DATE
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
TIME
1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
LOCATION
Projection Theater