Twisted Compactifications and Black Hole Microstates

Given a superconformal field theory in a certain spacetime dimension, one may compactify it to lower dimensions by performing a partial topological twist, introduced by Witten. I will discuss universal features of these constructions and their AdS/CFT duals as black holes or branes in gauged supergravity. This perspective leads, as one particular application, to a counting of black hole microstates in AdS_4.