Archer and Dr.Bernice King (2025) Photo via Laurence Kesterson
Brandon Archer (He/Him/His) is a PhD student at the University of California Berkeley in the Department of African Diaspora Studies. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 2025 with a double major in English Literature and a Specialized Major in Black Studies entitled “Visual Cultures and Literature of the African Diaspora”. Through research completed as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and his thesis, “‘Mo(u)rning Bodies in the ‘Trayvon Generation’: Negotiating Visual Responses to Violence From 1916-2021 and Imagining Alternate Black Embodiments”, his work asks about the stakes of imagining the Black body in mourning, and the traditions of visuality that problematize responses to anti-Black violence and cis-heteroparitarchal ontologies. He continues his dialogue with the Black arts as a member of the 2024-2025 Black Embodiments Studio arts writing cohort. Centering socially engaged scholarship, he has also assisted research and a comprehensive report on the regression of student activist’s rights and civic space for the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund.
Imagining a future where we are free, he helped start and served as chairman for the Philadelphia Black Student’s Alliance in 2020, included in the anthology How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising. He joined Philadelphia Education Policy and Programs nonprofit UrbEd, Inc. in 2020. Formerly serving as Communications Director, Board Member, and Executive Director from 2021-2024 for the organization and Bullhorn Newspaper— Philadelphia’s only youth-led newspaper. During his time with the organization he fundraised an annual budget of over $150,000 and expanded relationships with collaborators throughout the city, including the Philadelphia Foundation, Stoneleigh Foundation, and various Philadelphia organizers and cultural groups. While in the role he successfully helped launch a collaborative youth space in Center City, campaigns addressing gun violence and youth participation on the Board of Education, and represented the organization in a lawsuit with the PA ACLU against the Board of education. While at Swarthmore, he served as the president for various campus organizations and wrote a lot.
Currently, reading James Baldwin or thinking about our afro-futures.