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 (will also be livestreamed) invites you to develop a critical lens on Sudan’s ongoing counterrevolutionary war and the histories of resistance that precede and persist despite it.

Through a close engagement with critical readings and creative works produced by Sudanese artists, we will collaboratively build an understanding of the historical context, core demands, and cultural traditions that gave rise to the December Revolution of 2018. Together, 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.

This workshop explores three urgent and interconnected themes: 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. 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. 

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.

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 | 7-9:30PM)

Session Two: “Land” (Thursday, March 26th, 2026 | 7-9:30PM)

Session Three: “Memory” (Thursday, April 23rd, 2026 | 7-9:30PM)

Syllabus

The list of reading materials for the workshop series can be found here.

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.