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 engages the relationship between Black mourning and imagined non-human embodiments/ontologies in contemporary visual cultures. He continues his dialogue with the Black arts, publishing work as a member of the 2024-2025 Black Embodiments Studio (BES) Arts Writing Incubator 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. His tenure at the organization has been recognized by the organization with the Brandon Archer Kujichagulia Scholarship, awarded each year to a Philadelphia Public School Student. While at Swarthmore, he served as the president for various campus organizations, including the Swarthmore Afro-American Student Society and McCabe Scholars, and wrote a lot. 

Currently, reading James Baldwin or thinking about our afro-futures.