The Tradition of Sudanese Revolution: 

A Three Part Series with Bayan Abubakr

Begins in Winter/Spring 2026

Series Overview 

Presented by The Africa Center and Bayan Abubakr of the Sudan Solidarity Collective, this three-session in-person workshop (with virtual streaming options for increased accessibility) offers a political education on the ongoing Sudanese revolution and explores the lessons that we can learn and un-learn from it, together.

Through a close engagement with critical readings and creative works produced by Sudanese artists, we will build an understanding of the historical context, core demands, and cultural traditions that gave rise to the December Revolution of 2018. We will explore how tradition shapes Sudanese revolutionaries’ relationship to the land, their collective memory, and their commitment to realizing the sovereignty of the Sudanese people.

Here, “tradition” is understood broadly as the force of collective consciousness that binds Sudanese people to one another, offering a shared language to articulate the contradictions and complexities in their struggle. We will study the December Revolution as part of the broader fabric of the legacy of popular uprising in Sudan, and as the foundation for the life-saving work carried out by resistance committees, emergency response rooms, and local mutual aid groups. These networks keep communities alive in the face driven by profiteers and enabled by the repeated failures of the international community to hold them accountable.

Sessions will center on three core themes, explored in the following order: revolution, land, and memory. By the end of this series, participants will have engaged with universal struggles—state violence, dispossession, erasure, and resistance—through the lens of Sudan. Sudan offers a stark view of what a world of unchecked violence can look like: a state functioning as a Frankenstein-like machination of militarized force; weapons and parallel markets sustained by the displacement of indigenous peoples; regional actors reinforcing global hierarchies through their investments in local counterrevolutionary forces; and a coordinated, ongoing effort to erase histories and lived memory.

But alongside this, participants will also study how Sudanese communities, artists, and scholars chart a different kind of future—one built on what cannot be destroyed by material violence. This includes the sounds, images, and visions that root us in collective struggle and offer alternate realities; the critical work of resistance committees and emergency response rooms, which maintain makeshift medical infrastructure, operate food kitchens, provide shelter, and create the conditions for survival; and the ineffable, unwavering obligation to community that continues to define Sudanese resistance.

Interest Form, Selection and Participation Process

This iteration of the workshop series is designed for 50 in-person participants. All participants are expected to complete the assigned readings before each session and actively contribute to the collective learning environment. 

While attending all three sessions is not required, it is strongly encouraged.  Each session will last two hours,  with a 10-minute break.

Due to the limited capacity, all interested parties are asked to complete an interest form, linked through the registration button on this page and here. The deadline to complete the interest form is Monday, January 5th. Accepted participants will be selected at the discretion of the workshop facilitators and notified via email by Monday, January 26th, at which time the series curriculum and readings will be made available. 

Each session of the series will be livestreamed via The Africa Center’s youtube channel and a recording of the session will be later archived there as well for future viewings and increased accessibility.

Series Schedule

Session One: “Revolution” (Thursday, February 12th, 2026 | 7-9PM)

Session Two: “Land” (Thursday, March 26th, 2026 | 7-9PM)

Session Three: “Memory” (Thursday, April 23rd, 2026 | 7-9PM)

Instructor Bio

Bayan Abubakr 

PhD Candidate, Yale University

Bayan Abubakr is an archivist, writer, and a PhD candidate of history at Yale University and an organizer with Sudan Solidarity Collective. Her academic and advocacy work focuses on and addresses Sudan's historical and contemporary dilemmas as they relate to issues of racialization, militarization, and global and local empire-making schemes. Bayan's dissertation, "The Forty Days’ Road & the World Around It: Race, Slavery, and Society in Ottoman-Egyptian Sudan, 1840–1924," centers Sudan in trans-Saharan and Ottoman histories of slavery and circuits of capital. She reads Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and English sources to examine the nineteenth-century history of slavery in Ottoman-Egyptian Sudan as a constituent element of the economic, social, and intellectual routes comprising the global trade of Black enslaved peoples. Bayan’s academic and public facing writings have appeared in the New York Times, Jadaliyya, Middle East Report, and Mada Masr.