Matti Steinitz is a Ph.D. student at the Center for Inter-American Studies (Bielefeld University). His research focuses on hemispheric dialogues between Afro-descendants in the US and Latin America and the internationalization of the African American freedom struggle in the 1960s and 1970s. His dissertation thesis examines how the consumption and translation of US Soul music among Afro-Latin communities in New York, Brazil, and Panama contributed to the popularization of Black Power-inspired expressions of black pride and the emergence of transnational networks of solidarity in Latin American contexts, and how these influences defied prevalent discourses of mestizaje and democracia racial. He is also coordinator of a transdisciplinary network on the Black Americas.