ACLS Postdoc Research Fellow
About
Marcos Leitão De Almeida received his PhD in African History from Northwestern University in 2020. His dissertation, “Speaking of Slavery: Slaving Strategies and Moral Imaginations in the Lower Congo (ca. 1000 BCE–ca. 1850),” provides a detailed study of the construction and reconfiguration of slavery practices over the Longue Durée in a specific region of the African continent. It won the Harold Perkin Prize for best dissertation in the department of history in the academic year of 2020-21.
Almeida’s work uses linguistic methods in conjunction with archaeology and documentary sources to trace the distinct historical moments in which Lower Congo peoples innovated concepts of “slaves” and “pawns” as well as the objects of restraint and techniques of plundering and seizing outsiders. His research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the Society of Presidential Fellows at Northwestern University, among others, and his work has appeared in the Journal of African History, Azania, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. His current book project expands this earlier work to consider the shifting roles of slavery practices in the entirety of West-Central Africa, including northern and central Angola, the region just south of the Lower Congo.
