Photograph: Will Reintzell

 

I am a social and cultural historian writing transnational and comparative history of the global African diaspora. I am a Full Professor of History at the historically black Howard University in Washington DC, United States. I was trained in Brazil, Canada, and France with a PhD in History and Social and Historical Anthropology (2007), a PhD in Art History (2004), an MA in History (1998), and a BA in Visual Arts (1995).

My work explores the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade and their present-day legacies, including the long history of calls for reparations for slavery and colonialism, as well as the memory, heritage, material, and visual culture of slavery. I write, speak, and publish in English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish and my work has been translated in German, Dutch, Spanish, French, and Norwegian.

My scholarship has been recognized in several ways, both nationally and internationally.

In 2025, I was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. 

I was one of the eight scholars in the United States to receive the inaugural ACLS HBCU fellowship to work on my book The Power of Art: The World Black Artists Made in the Americas (under contract with Cambridge University Press) in 2024. 

In 2023, I was a Getty Residential Senior Scholar  at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, CA. In 2022, I was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute of Advanced Study (funding provided by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation), Princeton, NJ. I was also awarded the Senior Heinz Heinen Fellowship at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at Universitat Bonn (Bonn, Germany) in 2025, and a Clark Art Fellowship at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts in 2026. 

The Carnegie Corporation New York named me 2023 “Great Immigrant, Great American,” an annual list honoring the contribution of US naturalized citizens to democracy and America. 

I published over fifteen edited and single-authored books.

My book Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery in the Americas(University of Chicago Press, 2024), was one the two 2025 finalists of the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award. A hemispheric and narrative history of slavery in the Americas, Humans in Shackles centers Brazil (the country that imported the largest number of enslaved Africans in the Americas), the African continent, slave resistance, and enslaved women. A  Portuguese translation of this book will be published with Edições do SESC in Brazil in 2026.

Other recent books are The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism (Cambridge University Press, 2024), and Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History (2017, 2023) translated in French as Réparations: Combats pour la mémoire de l’esclavage (XVIIIe-XXIe siècle) and published by Éditions du Seuil in 2025.

Since 2017,  I have been a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO “Routes of Enslaved Peoples” Project (former Slave Route Project), and am also an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London, UK.   

I am one of the three editors of the book series Race in the Atlantic World at University of Georgia Press.

I serve on the editorial board of Slavery and Abolition, African Economic History, the Editorial Review Board of History in Africa and the Editorial Board of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents. I am also a member of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Scholarly Advisory Board and the advisory board of the Memory Studies Association. My past service to the history profession includes serving on the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review, the flagship journal of the American Historical Association (2019-2023), the Editorial Review Board of the African Studies Review of the African Studies Association,  the Executive Committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (2016-2020), and the Executive Board of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (2019-2022).

I have lectured about the history of Atlantic slavery and the slave trade in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, France, United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa. 

My opinion articles and reviews in English and Portuguese appeared in Slate, the Washington Post, Times, Aeon magazine, Africa is a Country, Newsweek, The Conversation, History News Network, African Arguments, Intercept Brasil, among others. Media outlets in the United States, UK, Portugal, Canada, Brazil, Spain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands have also featured my work. 

In 2023, I created the #Slaveryarchive Digital Initiative. Based on its own social media accounts on X, Instagram, and YouTube, the #Slaveryarchive Digital Initiative is intended to educate the public about the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade and promote scholarship in this field via book talks on video, a podcast, book reviews, syllabi, and the #Slaveryarchive Book Prize.

My curriculum vitae is available here