History Department

I have a B.A. in History from the Federal University of Brasília (UnB) in Brazil, where I studied colonial history of Brazil and Indigenous history. During my undergrad, I researched politics of mixed marriage, Indigenous women and colonization in the Amazon region in the eighteenth century. Currently, I am a PhD Candidate at the University of California-Davis specializing in Latin American history with a Designated Emphasis in African Diaspora Studies.

My dissertation project revisits the Amazon basin, and particularly the lower lands and Atlantic coastal floodplains as a region of knowledge formation on agricultural practices for empires, as well to counter them. My dissertation focuses on the role of environmental knowledge in empire building, ethno-racial stratification, and autonomous territorialization in the emergence of an Afro-Indigenous Amazon c.1750-1850s. The subjects I study are not alive anymore, but their legacies are apparent in present-day politics and the fight to legitimize traditions, identities, and national policies in Brazil.