Paul Vincent Ruma is a Ph.D. student in cultural anthropology at UNLV. His research focuses on Hip Hop cultural arts, including dance, music, and visual expression, as systems of knowledge, identity, and resistance. He combines ethnographic methods with lived experience as a practitioner to study how these forms are taught, preserved, and reimagined across global and institutional contexts. Paul brings over three decades of experience as a practitioner and global organizer to his academic work. He has coached and mentored generations of DJs and dance champions since 1998, most recently guiding 2024 Olympic medalists and breaking world champions from five countries. As founder of Mighty4 worldwide (40+ cities globally) and co-founder of Out for Fame, the USA's first national breaking championship, he contributed to establishing breaking as a global competitive sport. In 2024, he presented Breaking Boundaries at Harvard University's Hiphop Archive & Research Institute, marking the first formal recognition of breaking at an Ivy League institution. As co-founder of Scholars of Style publishing, he works to bridge Hip Hop culture and academia, including co-authoring These are the Breaks!, the first DJ/B-boy memoir in Hip Hop History.