In 2026, the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) will celebrate the 50th convening of its annual national conference. Under the leadership of Dr. Bertha Maxwell Roddey, a group of scholars convened in March of 1975 to review and discuss the goals of Black Studies programs across the nation for the purpose of promoting academic excellence and social responsibility in the discipline of Africana/Black Studies.

This year’s theme, “uMkhonto weSizwe (Tip of the Spear): Black Studies as Uncompromising Liberation,” concerns Black Studies fight against the current attack on the history and culture of African descended peoples. Black Studies as an academic discipline was founded by activist-intellectuals who sought to use the resources of academic and professional institutions to diagnose and solve problems of communities in the African diaspora. The history of Black Studies demands that Black Studies respond to the current assault by continuing to advocate and organize with Black and other oppressed communities to preserve and expound upon our humanity and agency.

The conference seeks conversations that both explore and inspire the continued advocacy of Black Studies and the continued fight for our freedom in America. Thus, given this current moment, NCBS calls for papers that examine any systemic inequality that examines unsettling moments and acts that many thought America had definitively moved beyond. While this conference is a call for vigilance and renewed commitment to the unfinished work of civil rights and a fight for true equity and freedom, it is also a call for papers that do not only focus on problems and struggles, but ones that also emphasize solutions and strategies for addressing contemporary issues that African Americans and Blacks in the African Diaspora face daily.

With this theme as an overarching framework, NCBS is inviting you to answer the call for papers by Monday, December 22, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. Submissions will not be accepted after this date. Proposals are vetted on a continuous, rolling basis. Submit early for timely consideration.

Proposals are encouraged to relate to this year’s theme; however, proposals of significant interest to the discipline of Africana/Black Studies will be considered. Possible paper topics for thought provoking panel discussion and intellectually stimulating research proposals can cover a vast array of topics within the discipline of Black Studies.

The conference, in its commitment to inclusion of a diversity of demographic, scholarly and social vantage points and points of view, welcomes the rich varieties of theories and schools of thought in Africana Studies (i.e., womanism, Afrocentricity, feminism, Kawaida philosophy, Pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism, African Centered Thought and Pedagogy, sexuality theories, socialist initiatives, cultural theories, aesthetic theories, and others). We urge you to join us.

Proposals must include:

• A title and abstract for the panel session or individual abstract.
• Titles and names of presenters in the session. Each presenter should be
• identified by their institutional affiliation or other identifying information.
• Title and name of chair/facilitator, if you are providing your own.
• Presentations by professional members should be indicated as such and those by students (whether graduate or undergraduate) should likewise be indicated as such.
• Incomplete proposals will not be considered.

Proposals with all presenters holding current NCBS membership status will be given first consideration. Renew or join now.

The conference committee will select a chair/facilitator for each accepted panel unless a chair/facilitator is named and identified as such by the organizer of the submitted panel.

The Conference Committee will group individual abstracts into thematic panels based on shared topics or areas of focus. Each panel will typically include 3 to 5 presentations, depending on the number of individual submissions received. The 75-minute session will be evenly divided among the presenters to ensure each participant has sufficient time to share their work.

ALL proposals must be submitted via All Academic. 

As you prepare to submit your abstracts:

• Your NCBS website username and password should also be your All Academic login credentials, if you have an existing NCBS account. If you have problems logging in, please email info@ncbsonline.org for assistance.  DO NOT create a new account.  We are striving to clean up our database by eliminating duplicate accounts.

• If you have changed institutions or positions, please make sure it is updated in All Academic. It is your responsibility to update your NCBS website account and All Academic information.  The program book and conference schedule populates your name and affiliation based on the information you have in the system.

• When submitting a panel, ALL members of the panel must be entered into All Academic or they will not appear on the conference schedule/program book.

• Please do not use all caps or all lowercase letters when entering names, institutions, as well as titles of presentations and papers.