Innovation, Resistance, and Possibilities for Flourishing
An edited collection contracted by Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming Spring 2027.
Focusing on the United States, this collection brings together scholars examining how AI-related technologies shape, and are shaped by, Black communities. At the center of the volume is a deceptively simple but profound question: What happens when the problem of the color-line is managed computationally?
The collection advances the field by developing new theoretical frameworks and examining sector-specific questions across medicine, labor, and education, while engaging contemporary debates surrounding community-centered and democratized AI, AI governance, AI ethics, and AI safety. Throughout the volume, familiar concepts are reconsidered through the lens of Black experience. In the context of AI safety, which communities are prioritized for protection, and which are disproportionately exposed to harm? If AI alignment seeks to embed human values into intelligent systems, whose values must Black communities align with, and what values emerging from Black experience might instead be embedded in AI?
At its core, this volume is concerned not simply with how AI-related technologies affect Black lives, but with the terms of the relationship itself: how Black communities engage these technologies, reshape them in service of collective flourishing, or refuse them altogether, particularly when they reproduce exclusion and harm. In this sense, the volume is simultaneously diagnostic, prognostic, and prescriptive. It identifies the structural conditions that produce inequitable technologically mediated outcomes, anticipates the trajectories they set into motion, and offers theoretical and practical pathways toward more just relationships between Black communities and artificial intelligence.
This collection covers three domains:
e.g. medicine and health, labor, environment, architecture, the arts, among others
Contributors who are as rigorous as they are innovative are welcome. The collection spans approaches from computer science to the social sciences, and interdisciplinary work is highly valued.
Qualitative, Quantitative, Mixed Methods and Theoretical approaches are welcome.
An internationally recognized sociologist who studies the social impact of AI and emerging technologies. He is an expert in democratizing AI and community-centric approaches, and regularly publishes research in leading AI journals such as AI & Society, AI and Ethics, and Philosophy and Technology. His current research explores community-based approaches to AI governance across the AI lifecycle, safety, and ethics.
Director for AI Security at the Institute for Security and Technology, where she studies the global security implications of artificial intelligence. Her work bridges AI, ethics, and public policy, with a focus on transforming abstract risk concerns into forecastable, governable quantities. Her prior experience includes roles with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. She holds an M.S. in Information Security, Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Submit a 100–250 word abstract below by August 31st at 2:00 PM ET. Those accepted will receive further instructions.
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