Gabriel Rocha

Vasco da Gama Assistant Professor of Early Modern Portuguese History

Research areas: History, Politics and Governance

Gabriel de Avilez Rocha is the Vasco da Gama Assistant Professor of History and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University. His work centers on the social, environmental, and maritime history of colonialism and slavery in the early modern Atlantic world, with a focus on the linkages between Atlantic Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Iberia. His current book project, The Atlantic Acceleration in the Long Fifteenth Century: Making Empire from the Global Commons, examines how popular struggles over shared ecologies shaped empire and insurgency in the early Atlantic. His articles and essays have appeared in the Colonial Latin American Review, Early American Studies, Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies: A Critical Anthology, and other volumes and publications. Major teaching and research interests include decolonial studies, the Black Atlantic, ecocriticism, microhistory, and community engagement.