Matthew O’Brien is a Ph.D. candidate based at the School of History at University College Dublin. He received his B.A. in Literature and Media from Dublin Business School and earned his M.A. in American History at UCD. His doctoral research focuses on black power grassroots activism in Chicago from 1968-1983 through a lens of political education and is funded by the Irish Research Council. As a Fulbright student to the University of Illinois at Chicago, Matthew will conduct primary research concerning community groups and organisations who embodied black empowerment and progression in the turbulent 1970s. While at UIC, he will also orchestrate a series of oral history interviews that will further enrich the research topic.