Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+)

Background

The Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies originated from initiatives at Harvard Divinity School. In 2012, Ahmed Ragab founded the Science, Religion, and Culture Program (SRC) at Harvard. In 2017, Ragab and Eli Nelson established the Black, Brown, and Queer Working Group within SRC to examine intersections of postcolonial, Indigenous, critical race, and queer theories. In 2019, Ragab, Nelson (then moving to Williams College), and Myrna Perez Sheldon from Ohio University incorporated the Center as an independent charitable nonprofit to extend the working group’s activities beyond university constraints. In 2020, Caitlin Gunn joined as director of the Pedagogy Lab. In 2023, Ragab completed his term as director, and Perez Sheldon assumed the role of interim director. ⁴

Programs and Activities

The Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies conducts activities focused on interdisciplinary research, pedagogy, and mentorship in areas, including critical race theory, indigenous and postcolonial theory, and queer studies. Its core offerings include an annual academic fellowship that provides mentorship, career development, and writing support to scholars and educators. The organization operates the Critical Pedagogy Lab, which develops open educational resources, hosts a summer pedagogy fellowship, and organizes an annual pedagogy conference. Additional activities encompass independent research initiatives, such as the Boarding School Education History Project, and media resources, including podcasts (Ventricles and Rage to Heal), journals and magazines (Osiris and Cosmologics), and other publications. ^{5  2}

Financials

In 2024, the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies reported total revenues of $834,681. Expenses totaled $249,182, resulting in a net income of $585,499 and net assets of $731,813. Contributions accounted for $834,203, nearly all the group’s total revenue. Government grants were $59,668. Notable expenses included executive compensation of $50,926, representing 20.4 percent of total expenses, and other salaries and wages of $76,771, or 30.8 percent of total expenses. Total assets stood at $731,813, with total liabilities at $0, yielding net assets of $731,813. ⁶

In 2023, the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies received three separate grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a left-of-center private foundation, of $200,000, $50,000, and $60,000. ^{7  8}

In 2023, the Henry Luce Foundation reported a $125,000 grant to the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies for BBQ+’s “Boarding School Education and History Project.” ⁹

In 2024, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation reported a $249,535 grant to the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies to “develop tools for effective and equitable virtual pedagogy that improve the experience of traditionally marginalized groups.” ¹⁰

People

Ahmed Ragab is a co-founder and director of the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies, as of February 2026. He is a physician, historian of medicine, and documentary filmmaker. He has been an associate professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and chairs the medicine, science and the humanities program at Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. His research addresses the history of medieval Islamic medicine, colonial and postcolonial medicine and science, gender and sexuality, postcolonial studies, “critical race studies,” and queer theory. He received his medical degree from Cairo University in 2005 and doctorate from the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris in 2011. Ragab is also a co-founder of Pinwheel Productions, a film production company supporting ethnic-minority and queer creators and stories. Earlier in his career, he was affiliated with Harvard University, where he engaged in activism, including a 2017 protest against the first Trump administration’s attempted rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). ^{11  12  13  14  15}