José Antonio Figueroa holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology from Rovira i Virgili University, Spain; and a Ph.D. in Latin American Cultural Studies and Spanish American Literature from Georgetown University. He is a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Arts of the Central University of Ecuador, as well as the project manager of Afro-esmeraldeños: memoria intelectual, social, cultural y apropiación territorial . He was a researcher at the Center for Advanced Latin American Studies, CALAS, in Hannover, where he led the project Universalismo situado: liberalismo radical, afrodescendencia y nación en Cuba y Ecuador. Figueroa has more than 50 articles published and among his four books the most outstanding ones are Realismo Mágico, vallenato y Violencia Política en el Caribe Colombiano (2009) and Republicanos Negros, published in 2022 by Crítica, Planeta.