Black Americas Network

Associate Professor of History, Spanish, and Portuguese
University of Michigan
(United States)
palberto@umich.edu

Paulina Alberto's research explores the intersections of ideologies of race and nation in Latin America and their power to shape ideas and experiences of citizenship across the region since independence, especially in Brazil and Argentina. She is particularly interested in the ways ideologies of national belonging shaped, and were shaped by, the experiences of Afro-Latin Americans. Her current book project, Black Legend: 'El Negro' Raúl Grigera and Racial Storytelling in Modern Argentina, reconstructs both the life story and the legends surrounding Raúl Grigera, a popular Afro-Argentine street figure from the early twentieth century. It examines the role of ?racial storytelling? in constructing whiteness and blackness in post-independence Argentina and the power of such narratives to influence individual fates.

 

More Information

Coordinadora del Directorio
de Afrocubanas
(La Habana/Hannover)
negronacubaine@gmail.com

Editora, webmaster, comunicadora y bloguera. Ha investigado, entre otros temas, la obra de la cineasta cubana Sara Gómez, las representaciones de género y raza en el discurso del hip hop cubano, el ciberfeminismo en Cuba, y los estereotipos racistas y sexistas en la sociedad cubana.

Department of Afro-American Studies
University of Wisconsin-
Madison
(United States)
saadell@wisc.edu

Her areas of specialization are African American and Black Francophone literature, twentieth century French Literature, and Black theater and theater history. Her most recent book is an edited collection of plays by African American women, Contemporary African American Women Playwrights (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2015). She currently is working on a book titled Feminism and Women Theatre Artists of the African Diaspora. Sandra is also a theater and on-camera actor and commercial print model.

Dept of Languages, Literatures & Cultures
University at Albany, SUNY
(United States)
maguilardornelles@albany.edu

She is an Assistant Professor at the University at Albany-SUNY. She specializes in the African diaspora of Latin America and was awarded with the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies (MACLAS) Wadysaw Maryan Froelich Research Grant, in support of her research project "Chasing Freedom: Black Criminalization, Leadership, and Writing in Colombia, Brazil, and Cuba." She is currently working on a book-length project entitled Herederos de la libertad: criminalización, heroicidad y escritura de afro-descendientes en Colombia, Brasil y Cuba.

Director of Graduate Studies
Department of English
University of Kansas
(United States)
ganatol@ku.edu

Her research interests include Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora Literature, especially 20th- and 21st-century women's writing, African American Literature, and Children's and Young Adult Literature, particularly representations of race and gender in narratives for young people.

Distinguished Professor of History
University of Pittsburgh
(United States)
reid1@pitt.edu

George Reid Andrews is a long-time researcher and writer on Afro-Latin American history and culture. He is currently engaged in two projects: a collaborative project (with Paulina Alberto, University of Michigan) on Black newspapers in Latin America; and a revised edition of his historical overview, Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000 (2004).

Global Languages & Cross-Cultural Studies Department
University of Indianapolis
(United States)
arriagae@uindy.edu

His research explores the way Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latino black communities in the Americas (Afro-Latin@, Afro-Latin Americans, Afro-Caribbean) are appropriating and adapting digital tools to transform some of the existing representations as well as to create new complex images of interconnection and co-existence. One of the sub-projects of such research agenda is the digital analysis of the Proceedings of the First Congress of Black Culture in the Americas (1977) and its impact on the emergence Afro-descendant cultural images in our current digital age.

Chair of the Department of Black Studies
University of California
(United States)
vbashitreitler@blackst udies.ucsb.edu

She is a Professor of Sociology, writer and artist. Her art centers on the intersection of race, migration, and inequality.

Escuela de Ciencias Humanas
Universidad del Rosario
(Colombia)
jairo.baquero@urosario.edu.co

Jairo Baquero is an Associate Professor of Sociology. His research areas are related with social inequalities, rural sociology, conflict and peace. His current research focuses on the theme of peacebuilding in Chocó, the region with the highest population of Afrodescendants in Colombia. As an activist, Jairo Baquero has also been involved in political initatives for peace in Chocó as the Inter-Ethnic Forum Solidarity Chocó (FISCH).

Contributions

anti-racist and
feminist activist
(Brazil/Germany)
baixadaberlinense@hotmail.de

As an active member of various organizations of Brazil's movimento negro, she was commited to raising black consciousness and critical awareness of the persistent racism in Brazilian society from early on. She was also involved in the neighborhood organisation Movimento Favela and the Centro de Mulheres de Favelas e Periferia (CMFP), an important institution of Afro-Brazilian feminism.Currently, Sandra Bello lives in Berlin where she is known as a protagonist of the local black movement.

University of Kansas
(United States)
crystalboson@gmail.com

She is a poet and an academic. Her research interests include Black Queer feminity and its intersections with protest movements, Hoodoo and Afro-Diasporic Religions, Black Feminism, African American Religion, Black Popular Culture, and Critical Race Theory. She has authored various books and has been previously published in Callaloo, Pank, The Black Bottom, and has a chapbook, "The Icarus Series", with Seven Kitchens Press.

Center for InterAmerican
Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
miriam.brandel@uni-bielefeld.de

Her research interests include Inter-American Studies (with special focus on Caribbean Diasporic Literatures in Canada and the US), Transnational Studies, Life Writing Studies, Postcolonial Literatures, Im/Migrant Literatures, and African-American Studies.

Centro de Estudos Sociais
Universidade de Coimbra
(Portugal)
mic@ci.uc.pt

Os seus actuais interesses de investigação incluem as seguintes áreas e temas: estudos americanos e afro-americanos; estudos literários e culturais comparados (a diáspora africana). Presentemente e Diretora da Op.Cit., Revista de Estudos Anglo-Americanos

Vicepresidenta de Costa Rica
(Costa Rica)
epsy.campbell@asamblea.go.cr

Epsy Campbell es política y economista costarricense, prominente dirigente afrocostarricense internacional, actualmente es la vicepresidenta de Costa Rica y ha sido dos veces diputada por el Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC). Es la primera mujer afrodescendiente que ejerza la vicepresidencia en un país en América Latina. Campbell ha publicado libros y artículos sobre democracia e inclusión, participación política y economía de las mujeres, pueblos afrodescendientes, sexismo y racismo, entre otros.También es integrante fundadora del Centro de Mujeres Afrocostarricenses y del foro Parlamento Negro de las Américas.

CONICET
(Argentina)
 

Valeria Carbone holds a Doctor degree in history from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and is a two-time Fulbright Fellow (University of Massachusetts, 2008, and University of Pennsylvania, 2014). She is a professor at the chair of History of the United States at the Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UBA. She is also a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Institute of Latin American Studies (UBA) and managing director of the American Studies Journal Huellas de Estados Unidos en Latinoamérica. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council  of Argentina (CONICET) and Academic Coordinator at SIT Study Abroad/World Learning, Buenos Aires office. 

City College/CUNY
(United States)
natalie.n.caro@gmail.com

Natalie N. Caro is a Bronx-born artivist, poet, author and a 2015 Pushcart Prize Nominee. She holds a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy from Lehman College/CUNY where she currently teaches freshman seminar & composition and an MFA in Poetry from City College/CUNY where she was selected as one of the first recipients of the Creative Writing Fellowship.

Contributions

The University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
(United States)
bchavez@live.unc.edu

His performance-research praxis includes interests in: oral history performance, black diasporic women in Southern México, intersections of processes of racialization and trans* subjectivities in the U.S. South and Mexican South, and decolonial methodologies.

James R. Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies
Dalhousie University
(Canada)
raetown27@gmail.com

Her research interests are African Canadian studies, with specific regard to the period of enslavement and emancipation in 18th and 19th century Canada and the Black Atlantic; African-Nova Scotian history; political consciousness; community building and culture; slavery's aftermath; Black youth studies.

Instituto Latinoamericano
Freie Universität Berlin
(Germany)
scosta@zedat.fu-berlin.de

Sergio Costa is a Professor of Sociology. He has published widely on matters of social inequality, cultural differences, democracy, racism and anti-racism in Brazil and other Latin American societies.
He is chair of desigualdades.net an international research network on interdependent inequalities in Latin America and member of the international research group EntreEspacios.

DJ/Promoter
(Colombia)
bongo@laregla.de

DJ Bongo from Colombia´s Costa Pacífica is one of the founders of La Regla , Berlin's first and most important regular Latino party which is still running every month, providing the local Latin@ diaspora with Salsa, Cumbia, and Boogaloo from the 1970s and heavy Afro-Latin barrio sounds of the 21st century. He has also organized and promoted Berlin concerts by major acts of música afro-latina like El Grupo Niche, El Gran Combo and Chocquibtown.

Bielefeld University
(Germany)
deborah.duttenhofer@outlook.de

Her research interests include entanglements between the Dutch Caribbean and North America, written and oral life narratives, Translocational Positionality and Belonging. She currently works on a research project which deals with relations between Afro-Diasporic communities in New York and St. Martin.

Trumpet player
(Cuba)

El Congo, trained at La Habana´s Instituto Superior de Arte, is one of Berlin's most sought-after trumpet players who regularly shares stages and appears on releases with Soul star Aloe Blacc, Afrobeat legends Tony Allen and Orlando Julius, Jimi Tenor, Patrice, Freundeskreis, and many others.

(United States)
mariafernandezma@gmail.com

Puerto Rican spoken word poet and performance artist. In her poems, which often combine Spanish and English lines, Mariposa explores issues of racism, empowerment and diasporic identity from a Nuyorican Afro-Latina perspective. Currently, Mariposa is hosting "Barrio Poetix"- a weekly open mic show at La Marqueta in Spanish Harlem/El Barrio.

Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History
Senior Associate Director
Center for Study of the American South
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(United States)
wferris@unc.edu

William R. Ferris is a professor of history at UNC Chapel Hill and an adjunct professor in the Curriculum in Folklore. He is associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, and is widely recognized as a leader in Southern studies, African-American music and folklore. He is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Prior to his role at NEH, Ferris served as the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he was a faculty member for 18 years.

Center for Inter-American
Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
ias@uni-bielefeld.de

Her research interests include African heritage in the U.S. and the Caribbean, U.S.-American ethnic literatures, U.S.-American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and Post-Colonial Studies.

Department of Philosophy and Modern Languages
California State University, Stanislaus
(United States)
garciasanborn@csustan.edu

Her research interests include Afro-Argentinean communities, literature from the Cono Sur and Centroamérica, literary and cultural theories, Hispanic and Amerindian poetry and language teaching pedagogies.

Intercollegiate Department of Chicano/a Latino/a Studies
SCRIPPS/ Claremont Colleges
(United States)
mgonzale@scrippscollege.edu

Her research interests lie at the intersection of Chicana feminist theory, Chican@ music, transnational musical dialogues, Performance Studies and feminist development theory. Her scholarly interests have been fueled by her experience as an active music practitioner and community organizer via East Los Angeles based Chicano rock group Quetzal

Department of English
University of Kansas
(United States)
mgraham@ku.edu

Maryemma Graham´s research areas include Transnational studies, African American and Diaspora literature and culture. In 1983, she founded and continues to direct the Project on the History of Black Writing, a "laboratory" committed to documentary and archival research and digital access. At KU, where she is University Distinguished Professor, she founded the Langston Hughes Poetry Project and while President of the Toni Morrison Society, created Language Matters, an international teaching collaborative. Among other international projects, she convened the Haiti Research Initiative.

Department of Anthropology
University of Delaware
(United States)
cguerron@udel.edu

A cultural and applied anthropologist originally from Ecuador, she is Associate Professor of Anthropology with joint appointments in Africana Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Latin American and Iberian Studies. Dr. Guerrón Montero studies the complex and multiple meanings and representations of identity among marginalized populations in modern Latin American and Caribbean nation-states (more specifically in Panama, Ecuador, Grenada, and more recently, Brazil). She also specializes in the anthropology of tourism and the anthropology of food in the African diaspora.

Center for Inter-American Studies
Bielefeld University (Germany)
astrid_haas@gmx.net
 

Her new research project "Black Inter-American Mobilities in the Age of Revolutions" studies forms and developments of black inter-American mobilities in the period of the first series of independence movements in the Americas. The project combines the cultural theoretical and historical approaches of Black / African Diaspora Studies, Inter-American Studies, and Mobility Studies with text-oriented methods of narrative, specifically autobiography, research.

(United States)
robin.h@progressivepupil.org

Robin J. Hayes is a New York-based scholar, human rights activist, and director of the award-winning documentary "Black and Cuba"(2013)
Hayes is the founder and principal organizer of Progressive Pupil - an organization which aims to make Black Studies for everybody by creating and sharing documentary films and social media that expand knowledge about the history, cultures and politics of communities of African descent, promote civic engagement and encourage collaboration between activists, students, scholars, artists, teachers and their allies.

(United States)
fjaima@sdsu.edu

Felicitas R. Jaima received her Ph.D. in African Diaspora History from New York University with a second concentration in Colonial African History in 2016. She also holds an M.A. in African American History from Seton Hall University. Her research, firmly rooted in African Diaspora scholarship, brings together historical approaches to studying the black experience with Black European studies. As an associate scholar with the digital archive "The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany," Jaima has conducted over twenty interviews with former enlisted women and military spouses. Her current project, "Adopting Diaspora: African American Military Women in Cold War West Germany", uncovers the activism of black American military women in hitherto understudied areas of the US military presence abroad including the household, hair salons, and schools. African American military women, she argues, protested racial and gender inequalities in daily life and ultimately made critical contributions to the Civil Rights Movement back home, while at the same time creating a distinct vision of diaspora for Germany's growing black population.

Center for Inter-American
Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
olaf.kaltmeier@uni-bielefeld.de

He is the Director of the Center for Inter-American Studies and Coordinator of the Federal Ministry Project Merian-CALAS (Center for Advanced Latin American Studies). His research interests are transnational history, Cultural Studies, development as well as history of the Americas in the 19th and 20th century.

Department of Modern Languages and Global Studies
South Dakota State University
(United States)
Luz.Kirschner@sdstate.edu

Her teaching and investigation interests lie in the comparative study of ethnicity, gender, race, and migration in the United States, Latin America, and Europe across various languages (English, Spanish, and German).

Department of Sociology
University of Massachussets Amherst
(United States)
lao@soc.umass.edu

Agustin Lao-Montes is an academic and social activist. He has been one of the most outspoken advocates for putting Afro-Latin America on the map of African Diaspora Studies and adopting a transnational and hemispheric perspective on the Black Americas. His research areas include sociology of race and ethnicity, social identities and inequalities, social movements, and postcolonial critique. He has also published widely on black social movements and afrodiasporic history in the Americas.

Art Labour Archives Berlin
(Germany)
alannalockward@yahoo.com

She is a Dominican author, curator and filmmaker. She is the founding director of Art Labour Archives, an exceptional platform spiraling consistently on theory, political activism and art since 1996. Her interests are Caribbean marronage discursive and mystical legacies in time-based practices, critical race theory, decolonial aesthetics/aesthesis, Blak feminism and womanist ethics.

Anne Garland Mahler is Associate Professor at the University of Virginia and author of From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity (Duke, 2018). Mahler's research examines the histories and artistic production of global radicalism with a focus on transnational solidarity movements in the Americas. She is the creator and director of the digital publication, Global South Studies, co-coordinator of the “Internationalism” project within the Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory, and co-editor of the book The Comintern and the Global South (forthcoming with Routledge). Her monograph in progress, South-South Solidarities: Racial Capitalism and Political Community from the Americas to the Globe, is supported by a 2020-21 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship

Department of Latino and
Caribbean Studies
Rutgers University
(United States)
nmtorres@rci.rutgers.edu

Nelson Maldonado-Torres from Puerto Rico is an Associate Professor at the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and a member of the Coree Faculty of the Comparative Literature Program at Rutgers University. His research interests include comparative critical and decolonial theorizing, theories of race and ethnicity, decolonial feminism, phenomenology, and social and political philosophy. As an expert in Caribbean political thought, he is particularly interested in the crossings of different genealogies of thinking, and their appearance in different genres of writing, discourses, artistic expressions, and social movements.

(Cuba)
nilocastillob@yahoo.es​​​

Nilo MC aka "El Guajiro del Asfalto" is the pioneer of the Hip Hop movement in Cuba. With "El Puente", recorded in 1998, he was the first Cuban musician to combine Cuban Son with US-inspired Hip Hop. Performing regularly as MC and DJ, he currently lives between Germany and Spain, where he has played at every major festival and as support act for artists as acclaimed as Manu Chao.

Cátedra de Estudios de Africa y el Caribe
Universidad de Costa Rica
Cantoamérica
(Costa Rica)
mmoneste@racsa.co.cr

Él es un compositor, guitarrista, promotor musical e investigador cultural. Durante treinta años ha investigado la cultura musical de la costa caribeña de Costa Rica y ha sido un promotor del calypso costarricense por medio de conciertos como solista y con su grupo Cantoamérica.

Department of History
St. Mary's University
(Canada)
johnjmunro@gmail.com

John Munro teaches US and international history, and has research interests in the areas of social movements, decolonization, and the cold war.

Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone
Studies
Florida State University
(United States)
mmunro@fsu.edu

His research interests include Francophone literature and culture, especially of the Caribbean region, Négritude (African and Caribbean), Créolité, Haiti,Postcolonial theory, Writing and exile in Francophone cultures, Rhythm in Francophone literatures and cultures, Writing disaster in the Caribbean, Caribbean sound studies.

Center for Inter-American
Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
amunoz_knudsen@uni-bielefeld.de

Her research interests include Afro-Caribbean populations in Central America and in the U.S, Black Culture and Artivism in the United States and Central America and Transnational Studies.

(Brazil)
 

Graduada em Pedagogia pela Universidade Federal Fluminense. Mestre em sociologia pela Universidade Federal Fluminense. Doutoranda em Educação pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Desenvolve pesquisas sobre Relações étnico-raciais na escola e Educação Quilombola a partir de duas comunidades Quilombolas da Região dos Lagos do Rio de Janeiro. É representante da Associação das Comunidades Quilombolas do Rio de Janeiro e Quilombola da comunidade da Rasa em Armação dos Búzios, RJ.

Econcult
Universitat de València
(España)
 

Sigrid Palacios es estudiante de doctorado en Econcult, Universidad de Valencia. En el marco de este doctorado, Sigrid está estudiando cómo, a partir de las actividades culturales derivadas del patrimonio musical de las comunidades negras del Pacífico colombiano, se generan procesos de desarrollo socioeconómico que podrían contribuir al estrechamiento de las brechas de exclusión.

Nace en la Habana, Cuba, un 29 de diciembre de 1972. Desde su infancia ha tenido inclinaciones hacia las artes en general, tomando como su passion personal la plástica. Es de formación autodidacta y desde el año 1997 hasta la fecha de hoy se ha dedicado a trabajar como artísta independiente o por cuenta propia. Desde 1999 a la actualidad continúa realizando exposiciones, tanto en Cuba como en Alemania, país donde actualmente reside.

Department Linguistique Lettres
Université Jules Verne à Amiens
(France)
paula.prescod@u-picardie.fr

One of her present research focusses is on the reappraisal of Carib identity in St Vincent and the Grenadines. This project is positioned within the theoretical perspectives and methodologies of linguistics, anthropology, cultural studies and history as it seeks to investigate the paths which public and self-opinion have taken in shaping Vincentian Carib identity.

Centro de Investigaciones Sociales
Universidad de Puerto Rico
(Puerto Rico)
agquinterorivera@yahoo.com

Catedrático en el Centro de Investigaciones Sociales de la Universidad de Puerto Rico y miembro fundador del Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Puertorriqueña (CEREP). Dirige proyectos sobre sociología de la cultura y es autor de múltiples libros entre los cuales se destacan su publicación más reciente Cuerpo y cultura, las músicas "mulatas" y la subversión del baile (Madrid: Ediciones Iberoamericanas Vervuert, 2009), premiado con el Frantz Fanon Book Award 2009.

Center for Global Studies
Bern University
(Switzerland)
prg@bluewin.ch

Maria del Pilar Gröbli from Colombia holds a Ph.D and is currently working as an associate researcher at the Center for Global Studies of the Bern University. She is conducting a research project on "Afrodescendant and Indigenous Transnational Movements in Latin America" with a regional focus on cross-border Ecuadorian-Colombian area.

American Cultural Studies
Julius Maximilian University, Würzburg
Visiting Scholar, 2016/17, Stanford University
(Germany)
heike.raphael-hernandez@uni-wuerzburg.de

Her research interests include Black Atlantic Studies, past and present; Caribbean Studies; Global South diasporas; Gender studies; Immigration; Film Studies; Visual Culture; Popular Culture.

Center for Inter-American
Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
wilfried.raussert@uni-bielefeld.de

He is Chair Of North American and Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University, Chair of the Federal Ministry of Research and Education Project Entangled Americas (2013-19) and Executive Director of the International Association of Inter-American Studies. His research interests include African American literature and transcultural mobility in African American music.

Bielefeld University
(Germany)
paola.ravasio@uni-bielefeld.de
 

As a scholar trained in Ancient Studies but specialized in Regional Studies concerning the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora in Central America, Paola Ravasio recently completed her Ph.D. studies at the University of Würzburg with a dissertation entitled Black Costa Rica. Her research interests center on the intersection between Black Atlantic Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Imagined Communities. She is specially interested in the literary manifestations of the glocal  as a revision of the dynamics between race, history, and citizenship, which she approaches from a transdisciplinary theoretical framework. 

División de Estudios Históricos y Humanos
Departamento de Historia
Universidad de Guadalajara
(Mexico)
nicolartist@hotmail.com

Entre sus intereses se encuentran los afrodescendientes: identidad, ciudadanía, memoria, territorio, Estado, integración regional, movimientos sociales, Interculturalidad, Arte y cultura, tribus urbanas (hip-hop, músicas "en resistencia", Barrios marginales, espacio público y su apropiación.

Inter-American Studies
Faculty for Linguistics and
Literary Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
amrc.pr@gmail.com

Her primary interests include Sociopragmatism, Migration and the Agricultural industries and systems in Latin American.

Susana Rocha Teixeira is a postdoctoral researcher and American Studies scholar at the Faculty for Linguistics and Literary Studies/ North American Literature and Culture at Bielefeld University. Her interests lie mainly in US-American literary and cultural studies. She is also interested in forms of artistic or cultural expression such as movies, quality TV, reality TV, and social media, and theoretical and methodological discussions within American (literary and cultural) studies, gender studies, theories of the body, and media studies. In her postdoctoral research project, she explores, amongst others, how during the Harlem Renaissance practices, actors and networks challenged old notions pertaining to the concept, category or tertium “Blackness.” Although the main focus of this work lies on the United States, it also adopts an Inter-American or hemispheric perspective as it is not only interested in the African American cultural and artistic production in the United States in the early twentieth century, but also the entanglements, movements, flows and disparities in the Americas, using the United States of America and Brazil as examples.

Center for Inter-American
Studies
Bielefeld University
pacoatlicue@hotmail.com

She is currently in the second year of the PhD in Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University in Germany. She is interested in researching Nahua culture and language as well as the Razteca Movement from a cultural studies' perspective.

Center for Inter-American
Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
julia.roth@uni-bielefeld.de

Her research interests include Feminist and Gender Studies, African American Studies, Critical Race Studies, Postcolonial Theories, Decolonial Approaches, Gender Relations, Intersectionalities, Global Inequalities, Borderlands & Entanglements, Theorizing Inter-American Studies, USA, Caribbean.

Center for Inter-American
Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
eleonora.rohland@uni-bielefeld.de

She is a Junior Professor for Entangled History in the Americas. Her research centers on the question how societies have dealt with climatic extreme events throughout history, deep-time perspectives on human-environment interaction including the history of science, technological evolution.

Department of English Language and Literature
University of Waterloo
(Canada)
wsiemerling@uwaterloo.ca

His current research includes African Canadian Writing, Literary History, and the Presence of the Past. Earlier books include Canada and Its Americas: Transnational Navigations (co-edited), The New North American Studies: Culture, Writing, and the Politics of Re/Cognition (Routledge 2005, French translation 2010). He is a contributor to The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative (2014), The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature (2012), and the forthcoming Cambridge African American Literature in Transition, 1750-2015.

Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
(United States)
kslocum@unc.edu

She is Director of the Institute of African American Research at Chapel hill and specializes in studies of globalization, place identities, race and history in the Caribbean and the United States. Slocum is the author of Free Trade and Freedom: Neoliberalism, Place and Nation in the Caribbean (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and she is currently completing a book manuscript on the contemporary appeal of historic U.S. communities known as Black towns.

Professor of Sociology at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences Berlin  

Research associate at Institut for Latin American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

Rocío Vera Santos holds a PhD in Sociology from the Freie University of Berlin (FU Berlin).

 

Her book ‘Dinámicas de la Negritud y Africanidad, Construcciones de la Afrodescendencia en Ecuador’ received the Isabel Tobar Guarderas Prize in 2016 for best work at a national level in social sciences in Ecuador. She recently co-authored the book ‘Entre el Atlántico y el Pacífico Negro. Afrodescendencia y regímenes de desigualdad en Sudámerica’.

 

In 2010 she worked at the exhibition “Black Box Afro-Ecuador” at Schloßplatz Berlin. Her video project “Narratives of Deracination” with young refugees, German, and Latin American students, received the Audience Award in the video competition for the 70th anniversary of the internationalization of FU Berlin in 2018.

 

She specializes in Gender and Ethnicities Studies, Afro descendants in Latin America, social inequality, migration, racism, anti-discrimination, and human rights.

 

Link:

https://www.lai.fu-berlin.de/disziplinen/soziologie/AW/Rocio-Vera-Santos/index.html

Center for Interamerican
Studies
Bielefeld University
(Germany)
matti.steinitz@uni-bielefeld.de

Matti Steinitz is a DJ, journalist and researcher with a focus on afro-diasporic movements and cultures in the Americas. He´s especially interested in the interactions between black communities in the U.S. and Latin America. Currently, he's working on a Ph.D. project which investigates how US African American soul music contributed to the hemispheric popularization of the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies
(Trinidad and Tobago)
drmasylvester@hotmail.com

Her research topics of interest are Music and National Identity in Calypso and Soca, Music of Diasporic Carnivals, Narratives of Resistance in Calypso and Ragga Soca music, Steelpan and kaisoJazz musical identities and Music and Human Rights in the Americas. She is currently the Newsletter Editor of the Caribbean Studies Association and Member of the Editorial Board for the Commentaries Journal, Dutch Sint Maarten.

(Brazil/Germany)
goticopaz@gmail.com

Tikogo aka Adriano Gotico is a Berlin-based beat maker, producer, DJ and Hip Hop drummer. Tikogo´s sound fuses Afro-Brazilian styles with Hip Hop, Jazz, Funk, Reggae and Dub. In Berlin, he´s a very active member of the local Black music scene. His first album "Agua" has been released in 2016 on Dezi-Belle.

(Argentina)
purediversity@hotmail.com

Mirta Toledo is a renowned painter from Buenos Aires. Reflecting on her own Afro-guaraní and Spanish ancestry, her paintings collected in the series "Diversidad Pura" focus on issues of ethnic, cultural, sexual and religious diversity, proposing alternatives to eurocentric visions. She wants to use her artwork as a tool for visibilization, especifically of Argentina´s neglected and marginalised Afro-descendant population. She has spent the last two decades painting and teaching in the USA, where she has won several awards for her work.

Institute of Caribbean Studies,
University of the West Indies Mona Campus
(Canada/Jamaica)
lisa.tomlinson02@uwimona.edu.jm

Her areas of specialization includes literary and cultural studies of the Caribbean and African diaspora, Black literary criticism and anti-colonial studies.

Universidad de Puerto Rico / Universität Bremen
(Puerto Rico)
juan-j.velez@gmx.net

Estudió filosofía, sociología y estudios hispánicos en Puerto Rico y en Alemania, donde se doctoró en filosofía. Sus áreas de interés investigativo son, entre otras, la filosofía intercultural-latinoamericana, el pensamiento decolonial, la reflexión en torno a la articulación de identidad cultural en el Caribe y la etnomusicología con enfoque en música afrocaribeña. En sus escritos desarrolla una perspectiva interdisciplinaria intercultural-decolonial. Con su trabajo como percusionista en varias bandas de música latina
y dictando conferencias promueve la difusión de la cultura caribeña en Europa.

Department of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester
(England)
peter.wade@manchester.ac.uk

His research interests center on race and ethnicity in Latin America, with particular reference to Afro-descendant groups. He has done extensive research on Colombia, looking at racial discrimination, black cultural identities, the black social movement, and Colombian popular music in the twentieth century. His numerous publications on these matters have become main references in the studies on Afro-Latin America.

Women's & Gender Studies Program
University of Texas at
Arlington
(United States)
swatson1@uta.edu

She is Director of the Women's & Gender Studies Program and Associate Professor of Spanish at the UT. Her research interests include Afro-Panamanian and Hispanic Caribbean Literature and Culture, Hip Hop, and Critical Race Theory. She is also co-editor of the journal PALARA: Publication of the Afro-Latin American Research Association.