James Padilioni, Jr., a Ph.D Candidate and Teaching Fellow in American Studies (Africana-affiliate) at the College of William and Mary, discusses his dissertation project that is part ethnography, part history, part critical race theory, and focuses upon the circulation of iconography and ritual performances relating to St. Martin de Porres – the first of African descent from the Americas – through case studies located from across the Diaspora in the Caribbean, South America, and the United States.

Padilioni's research interests include the religious and aesthetic practices of the African Diaspora, with a focus on Black music and performance, folk/syncretized Catholic practices in Afro-Latinx and African-American contexts, as well as questions related to ritual knowledge and the phenomenology, kinesthetics, and ontology of race.

Padilioni is a co-host of the Always Already critical theory podcast and the director of its Epistemic Unruliness stream where he interviews activist scholars and artists who use their craft to challenge systems of domination.