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PROFESSOR MARTHA DIAZ

Martha Diaz is an award winning community organizer, social entrepreneur, media producer, archivist and curator.

For two decades, Diaz has traversed between the hip-hop entertainment industry, non-profit sector and academia.

 

She has worked in Hollywood and independent movie productions, producing short films, TV shows, documentaries, music videos, and PSA’s. Diaz co-founded, produced and curated the Hip-Hop Odyssey International Film Festival and Hip-Hop Education Summit, and she was the executive director of the community building organization Hip-Hop Association.

 

In 2010, Diaz formed the Hip-Hop Education Center to cultivate and professionalize the field of hip-hop-based education. She is co-editor of the Hip-Hop Education Guidebook, Vol. I (Hip-Hop Association, 2007) and Rebel Music: Resistance Through Hip Hop and Punk (Information Age Publishing, 2015).

 

Among her fellowships and residencies, Diaz served as Fellow at NYU Reynolds Program for Social Entrepreneurship, Senior Fellow at the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation - National Museum of American History, and resident Hip-Hop Scholar at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture - NY Public Library.

 

Diaz recently associate produced the NAS: Time Is Illmatic documentary and is a visiting curator at the Museum of the Moving Image.

DOCTOR JASON NICHOLS

Jason Nichols is an academic and artist with a range of interests, which include black masculinities, hip-hop music and dance, bullying amongst emerging adults, and black and Latino identities and relations.

He is a full-time lecturer in the African American studies department at the University of Maryland College Park and the current editor-in-chief of Words Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture, the first peer-reviewed journal of hip-hop studies. Dr Nichols is also a rap artist who raps under the moniker Haysoos and is one half of the internationally recognised rap group Wade Waters.

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