The Black Central Americas (BCA) Project is a digital public humanities initiative dedicated to amplifying the histories, cultures, thought, and politics of Black Central American communities. Conceived as a meeting ground, it is a space where histories are traced, knowledge is exchanged, and connections are forged across time and place. We are committed to building a growing resource that constellates the intellectual, artistic, and activist formations shaping Black Central American life past and present, and embrace the digital as a conduit for transnational dialogue among scholars, artists, and organizers invested in Black Central American Studies. The BCA Project is co-coordinated by Melanie Y. White and Nicole D. Ramsey and has received support from Georgetown University and the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective.
Melanie Y. White
Co-founder/co-coordinator
Dr. Melanie Y. White is a Black Studies scholar and Assistant Professor of Afro-Caribbean Studies at Georgetown University. Her work explores how Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous communities in Caribbean Central America confront racialized and gendered colonial violence through political organizing, artistic expression, and everyday practices of survival. For over a decade, her research has centered on the region’s histories of resistance and cultural production, tracing how Black Central Americans have forged pathways of sovereignty and belonging across shifting colonial and national landscapes. As co-founder and co-coordinator of The Black Central Americas Project, she seeks to create a digital space of diasporic connection that not only amplifies the histories, cultures, and intellectual traditions of Black Central America but also nurtures cross-border dialogue and collective memory.
Nicole D. Ramsey
Co-founder/co-coordinator
Dr. Nicole D. Ramsey is an interdisciplinary Black cultural studies scholar specializing in the intersections of race, gender, nation, and diaspora in Central America and the Caribbean. She is an Assistant Professor of Latina/o Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research critically examines how Black Belizeans, including Creoles and Garinagu, navigate identity, belonging, and citizenship through national commemoration, digital spaces, migration, and tourism. She has published in Callaloo and Small Axe. As a community cultural archivist engaged in public scholarship and community-centered work, she works to collect and preserve oral histories of Caribbean and Black Central American populations in Los Angeles and California more broadly.
