Stefanie Alisch is a musicologist and dj from Berlin, she currently works as research assistant at the music archive of Iwalewa-Haus. She researches on kuduro as a PhD candidate of the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies. Alisch studied musicology, Portuguese and English at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and completed with her Magister paper «Tell me, Tell me, Can you Feel the Vibe? Broken Beat in London», which included field research in London.

In 1997 Alisch started djing as Stef the Cat. Through djing, running a bar in the infamous Berlin living room scene and adminstering Jazzanova’s publishing affairs she qualified for the Red Bull Music Academy in Dublin in 2000. This intense exchange with djs and music industry experts spawned international collaborations. In 2003/2004 she spent a year studying ethnomusicology at UFBA (Salvador da Bahia, Brazil) while conductiong field research on Afro-Brazilian rhythms as well as djing and promoting music events with local djs. Own radio shows led her to teach radio making at HKW, Hamburger Bahnhof and Edith Ruß Haus für Medienkunst. In 2009 she founded the Groove Research Institute Berlin. Main research insterests: kuduro, groove, music and bodily-performative practices in the Black Atlantic, female hip hop, farsi pop, cultural transfer in the lusophonic realm.