Kuno is excited by exploring historic engagements with land and efforts toward political education within Black liberation movements. Kuno concentrates in Africana Studies, where he also serves as a Department Undergraduate Leader and has worked as an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant for an archival course in the Department. Kuno participated in Brown's Transformative Justice Practitioner Program and serves as a student coordinator for the Transformative Justice Initiative, which seeks to help communities address harm and build more accountable relationships. Kuno has previously served as a Minority Peer Counselor, worked with the abolitionist student group Railroad, and has served as the community development chair for Brown’s Black Pre-Law Association.

Project: 

The election of the candidate collective known as Quilombo Periférico to the São Paulo Municipal Chamber in 2020 advanced the development of quilombismo, a concept theorized by the late Afro-Brazilian politician Abdias Nascimento. This project seeks to chart formations of quilombismo as an Afro-Brazilian political theory and organizing strategy through archival research in the collections of my mentor (and close colleague of Nascimento), the late Brown University Professor Anani Dzidzienyo, and semi-structured interviews with members of Quilombo Periférico. My project aims to further the legacy of Professor Dzidzienyo’s extensive research on Nascimento’s ideas by documenting the innovative efforts of one Afro-diasporic political collective, Quilombo Periférico, to build consciousness and power by engaging historic narratives and practices of resistance.

Advisor: Dr. Keisha-Khan Perry and Dr. Sophie Abramowitz