Project STAND will host a keynote address featuring distinguished scholar and public intellectual, Dr. Ruha Benjamin. Benjamin's talk, Collective Imagination: Freedom Dreaming and Liberation, will address how science and technology reinforce social inequalities and the vital role of grassroots organizers who boldly imagine more just possibilities. 

Ruha Benjamin is a transdisciplinary scholar, writer, and educator. Her research and teaching explore the social dimensions of innovation and technology, as well as the radical potential of imagination. She is a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and founding director of the Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab. Her work investigates the relationships between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, and health and justice. She is the author of Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), Viral Justice (2022), Race After Technology (2019), People's Science (2013), and editor of Captivating Technology (2019).