Markus Heide is associate professor at the University of Hildesheim and affiliated researcher at the Swedish Institute for North-American Studies at Uppsala University. His recent research concentrates on Inter-American relations (USA, Canada, Mexico) and the US-Mexico border (history and current situation). In this context he co-edited Hemispheric Encounters: The Early United States in Transnational Perspective (2015) and published contributions on border film, border art, and popular culture in academic journals in the US and Europe. In 2017 and 2018 he was visiting research fellow at the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies at UC San Diego, doing research and field work for his project on The US-Mexico Borderlands as Contested Space: Film, Art, and Popular Culture. He is a Fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar.