Uncovering hidden histories
Ruth C. Pión Vizcaíno is an Afro-Caribbean researcher, activist, and founder of AfroHistoriaRD. Her work challenges colonial narratives and centers Afrodescendant memory, culture, and resistance through heritage education and liberatory practices, opening up new ways of seeing the past, understanding the present, and reimagining the future.
Fellowships & AWARDS
CURRENT RESEARCH
2025-2026 ARTISTIC RESEARCH FELLOW
Historical Maroonage: Decolonizing space, memory, and heritage
Historical Maroonage addresses the silencing of the Black experience in the Dominican Republic, where Eurocentrism and racism plague spaces of memory and the historical narratives that inform them. Through a publicly engaged approach the project seeks to ensure that the voices of marginalized communities are heard and that their history is incorporated into the narrative fabric of the country and the region. This digital and public humanities project aims to amplify AfrohistoriaRD’s liberatory practice, which disrupts dominant narratives, investigates silenced histories, encourages critical thinking, and fosters imagination by creating new ways to examine our past.
CURRENT RESEARCH
2025-2027 DIGITAL JUSTICE SEED GRANTt
Cimarronas: A Black Women’s Archive of Ayiti-Quisqueya
Cimarronas: A Black Women’s Archive of Ayiti-Quisqueya is a digital platform that narrates the histories of ten Black women across the Indigenous island of Ayiti, today’s Republic of Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Using digital mapping tools, post-custodial archiving, animations, biographical narrations, and site visits, the Cimarronas platform will be a trilingual resource to researchers in Caribbean Studies, Geography, and Gender Studies while remaining an accessible teaching platform for college-level educators. Beyond a transnational framework, Cimarronas moves scholars toward an understanding of the island's shared history, particularly in the 16th through 19th centuries.
SOURCE: Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla from Sevilla, España, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
CURRENT RESEARCH
Afrohistoria Digital
Afrohistoria Digital highlights the lives of the first Africans to arrive on the island, their descendants, and other Afro-diasporic communities in the Dominican Republic. The platform will allow users to trace routes connecting historical and archaeological sites, monuments, cultural spaces, traditions, and anti-colonial heroes using ArcGIS and Storymaps. Storymaps will enable the user to access the selected site's associated historical content and multimedia, creating an immersive experience as a self-guided on-site tour supported by an integrated audioguide accessible through a mobile device or as a virtual tour anyone can do from home.
FEATURED PRESS
For media inquiries or interview requests, contact me here.
What does a decolonized city tour look like in the oldest European settlement in the Americas?
Black Activists take on Dominican government and society in quest for justice and recognition
In the Dominican Republic, the Fight for Abortion Rights Is a Fight Against Anti-Blackness