An educator with 14-years of experience, Afro-Cuban female author Eva Silot is an interdisciplinary and independent scholar, former diplomat and international negotiator in the United Nations, representing Cuba and developing countries. the focus of her presentation is her recently published her first non-fiction academic book: Cuban Fusion: the Transnational Cuban Alternative Music Scene, on Cuban music and transnationalism.

Surveying the impact of Cuba’s economic crisis after the demise of the eastern socialist block, Silot’s book documents a relatively unexplored transnational network of collaborations among Cuban musicians that migrated to many different countries from the 1990s forward. The book’s main argument is that in light of the 1990s crisis in Cuba, new transnational and alternative narratives emerged, resulting in creative “in-between” spaces that reflect a post- socialist aesthetic condition. The manuscript also documents important developments in the Cuban jazz and fusion scenes outside the island in the last 20+ years..

Silot is currently the ethnic studies teacher at Oakland School for the Arts, in Oakland, CA. She has a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, Spanish and Literatures from the University of Miami since 2016, an M.A. in International Studies from Florida International University, and a B.A. in International Relations from Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales, in Havana, Cuba.