André Luís Ferreira, Ph.D
Life is Wild
- Amazonia
- Indigenous Slavery
- Colonial Latin America
- Race and Indigeneity
- Legal History in Iberian Worlds
- Archival Research and Digital Humanities
I am a Black historian from Brazil and a sixth-generation descendant of an enslaved Black woman who obtained her freedom under the 1888 law that abolished slavery in Brazil, the Lei Áurea. In my family, this historical milestone survives as a powerful oral narrative and remains part of our collective memory. These memories shaped both my conviction that history would become my professional path and my broader commitment to studying slavery and freedom in the Amazon during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I received my Ph.D. in Social History from the Graduate Program in Social History of the Amazon at the Federal University of Pará in 2023. The international dimension of my career includes research appointments at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn (2021–2022); at the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, where I was part of the project Revisiting Dutch Brazil and Johan Maurits (2020–2022); and at the University of Seville, Spain, where I held a research internship in 2019.
I am the author of Injustos Cativeiros: os índios no Tribunal da Junta das Missões no Maranhão (Caravana, 2021) and the recipient of the International Young Researcher Award granted by the Portuguese Association of Economic and Social History in 2019.
Biography
Academic Positions
Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Postdoctoral Researcher, 2023–present
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
Doctoral Fellow, 2021–2022
Mauritshuis, The Hague, The Netherlands
Researcher Fellow, 2020–2022
University of Seville, Seville, Spain
Doctoral Fellow, 2019
Education
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2023
Ph.D., History, Federal University of Pará, UFPA, Brazil. -
2017
M.A., History, Federal University of Pará, UFPA, Brazil. -
2014
B.A., History, Federal University of Maranhão, UFMA, Brazil.