Dr. Halifu Osumare is Professor Emerita of African American & African Studies at University of California, Davis, and has been a dancer, choreographer, and cultural activist for over forty years. She is recognized for her global hip hop studies books, elucidating why hip-hop culture became a global youth phenomenon: The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves (2007) and The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip-Hop (2012).

Her presentation explores the reasons for hip hop culture’s proliferation throughout the world. Shifting perceptions about African-descendant peoples, through tools like Critical Race Theory and the 1916 Project, is crucial to progressive change. Dr. Osumare uses “We Got Next! Why Hip-Hop is Global” to explore how hip hop and Black people are at the crux of the current global cultural shift.