The Black Press Research Collective  (BPRC) is an interdisciplinary group of scholars committed to generating digital scholarship about the historical and contemporary role of black newspapers in Africa and the African Diasporas.

Drawing on the work of Colin A. Palmer we understand the term African Diasporas to refer to the “dispersal” of Africans outside of the African continent who are bound together by their struggle against racial oppression. However, and again like Palmer, the BPRC also makes a conscious effort to include the African continent in our understanding of Diaspora.  Still, the BPRC focuses its scholarship on newspapers published or written by individuals living outside of Africa who have been dispersed, either through choice or through force, and now live elsewhere. The BPRC strives to avoid homogenizing newspapers of the Diaspora but to explore how they operate in specific periods and settings.  At the same time, the BPRC is interested in generating new methodologies that explore the concept of an African Diasporic press in the formation of global communities of people of African descent.

BPRC also serves as a repository/archive for the storage, analysis, digitization and distribution of material on the study of a global black press.  In this regard, the Black Metropolis Research Consortium Survey (BMRC) serves as a model.  The BPRC will serve as a “second space” for documentation of materials about black newspapers that are difficult to identify and locate with more traditional research methodology.

Finally, BPRC is dedicated to encouraging and training new generations of scholars in the study of black newspapers and their significance in African Diasporic communities.

Because of the distinctive nature and role of newspapers in the Diaspora, the Collective’s work primarily focuses on these publications but offer some resources and scholarship on magazines.

To contact BPRC administrators and members or submit entries for the Resources page, send an email to bprc@blackpressresearchcollective.org.