Rinaldo Walcott is a professor and chair of the department of Africana and American studies at the University at Buffalo, where he is also the Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies. His research focuses on the cultural expression of Black life and its national, transnational and diasporic cross-currents. Walcott is the author of a number of books, including his most recent, The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom, and On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition, which was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards in 2021.
