Matti Steinitz is a researcher on Afro-diasporic social movements and popular cultures at the Center for InterAmerican Studies (Bielefeld University) with a special interest in transnational flows and networks of solidarity between Black communities in Latin America, the Caribbean and the US. He obtained his M.A. degree from the Free University of Berlin with an award-winning thesis on Black Power in Latin America which was published in 2014. Currently, he is writing his Ph.D. thesis on the impact of Soul music and the African American freedom struggle in Panama, Brazil and New York´s Puerto Rican community and curating a collaborative politico-cultural project on Hip-Hop in Havana and Berlin. Since 2016, he has been coordinator of the transdisciplinary Black Americas Network, which brings together a broad range of scholars, activists, musicians and artists, whose work is related to the Afro-diasporic presence in the Americas. He is also a dedicated vinyl record collector and DJ with a focus on hemispheric Black popular music from the 1960s and 1970s.