The initiatives featured here bring together scholars, cultural institutions, artists, and communities to confront difficult histories, document overlooked stories, and create new forms of collaboration across borders and disciplines. Spanning research, cultural heritage, artistic practice, and public engagement, these projects connect local experiences to global histories and foster new conversations about memory, justice, and belonging.
Founder and Director
Through initiatives including the Slave Wrecks Project, the Global Curatorial Project, the Slave Voyages Consortium, and related programs, the Center brings together scholars, cultural institutions, artists, and communities to generate new research, strengthen cultural heritage stewardship, and expand public understanding of slavery and its enduring legacies.
Co-Director
The Slave Wrecks Project (SWP) is an international network of researchers, museums, cultural institutions, and descendant communities dedicated to documenting, preserving, and interpreting the maritime history of the transatlantic slave trade and its enduring legacies. SWP is co-coordinated by the CSGS and The George Washington University.
As Co-Director, Gardullo helps lead a global collaboration that weds science and spirit by bringing together archaeology, history, cultural heritage, and public engagement. The project has helped advance collaborative descendant-centered approaches to research, interpretation, and heritage stewardship while exploring slavery's enduring impact across the African diaspora.
Co-Director
The Global Curatorial Project (GCP) is an international network of scholars, curators, and educators dedicated to expanding public understanding of slavery, colonialism, and their contemporary legacies.
Co-directed by Gardullo and developed through a partnership between NMAAHC's Center for the Study of Global Slavery and Brown University's Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, the project advances new approaches to public history through exhibitions, public programs, workshops, and digital initiatives that enable institutions across multiple continents to interpret interconnected histories of slavery, colonialism, and freedom collaboratively rather than in isolation.
Co-Director
Unfinished Conversations is an international oral-history and public-engagement initiative connected to In Slavery's Wake.
Co-directed by Gardullo through a partnership between NMAAHC's Center for the Study of Global Slavery and Brown University's Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, the project has documented the voices and experiences of descendant communities across Africa, Europe, North America, and South America developed through a model of shared stewardship with the communities themselves. The resulting archive preserves voices and perspectives often absent from traditional historical records while exploring how memories of slavery, colonialism, and resistance continue to shape contemporary life across the African diaspora.
Co-Founder and Co-Director
Art in the Wake is an international initiative that brings together artists, curators, scholars, and communities to examine the legacies of slavery and colonialism through contemporary artistic practice. Conceived and developed by the Center for the Study of Global Slavery with Indigo Arts Alliance, the project supports exhibitions, convenings, workshops, and public programs that connect creative expression with historical inquiry.
Working across national boundaries, Art in the Wake creates opportunities for dialogue, reflection, and engagement with histories that continue to shape communities throughout the African diaspora.
Ritual & Repair is an international initiative conceived by The Center for the Study of Global Slavery that brings together artists and communities across Africa and the diaspora to explore textile practice as a tool for healing, cultural exchange, and storytelling. Through collaborative workshops and shared creative projects, participants connect personal memories, community traditions, and diasporic histories while contributing to an ongoing transnational conversation about repair, belonging, and collective memory.
Founder and Lead Curator
Through a long-term collecting initiative focused on race and incarceration, Gardullo explores the historical connections between slavery, punishment, and justice in the United States. Beginning with the acquisition of a guard tower and jail cell from Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola), the project examines how the legacies of slavery continue to shape contemporary systems of incarceration.
Drawing on oral histories, journalism, artworks, and personal collections, the initiative expands the historical record of incarceration by centering voices, experiences, and forms of creativity often absent from museum collections and public narratives.
Beyond individual projects, Gardullo has focused on building institutions, partnerships, and collaborative networks that expand the reach and impact of public history. His work includes helping shape the National Museum of African American History and Culture, founding the Center for the Study of Global Slavery, and creating international collaborations that connect museums, universities, heritage organizations, artists, and communities across multiple continents.
Through these efforts, he has helped create new platforms for scholarship, collections stewardship, cultural heritage preservation, public engagement, and global dialogue. Together, these initiatives demonstrate how cultural institutions can serve as engines for research, collaboration, and civic life.