Prof. Dr. Tâmis Peixoto Parron
Senior Guest Researcher (Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship)
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
March 2025–May 2025
Fluminense Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
tamisparron@id.uff.br
Title of current research project: "Liberty and Power: Constitutions, Slavery, and the Origins of Our Times (c. 1780–c.1830)"
Academic Profile
My research explores the deep interplay between black slavery and foundational concepts of modern constitutional power in five empires or nations that were committed to perpetuating slavery during the Age of Revolutions: the United States, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire, and the Empire of Brazil. I aim to uncover, through the lens of conceptual history, how black slavery became the historical cornerstone of key political concepts in liberalism (representation, citizenship, and sovereignty) and how these concepts, in turn, became means of politically managing the future of slavery in the major nations of the Atlantic world. While prior research presents the fundamental concepts of modern Constitutions as universalistic, highly abstract, and theoretically driven – qualities they undeniably possess – my study exposes their deeply racialized and violent origins. I argue that our concepts of freedom and human emancipation shaped the political mechanisms of collective will formation to support slavery. This inversion turned the constitutional protection of freedom into its opposite: the institutional safeguarding of racism and oppression, notably the enslavement of black people. My research is grounded on a vast array of sources, including parliamentary debates, pamphlets, political theory treatises, doctrinal books, newspapers, private correspondence, and diplomatic communications, drawn from texts in six different languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Latin.
since 2017
Associate Professor, Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2016–2017
Volkswagen Pos-Doctoral Fellow at WIGH, Harvard University. Supervisor: Sven Beckert
2012–2015
PhD in History, Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil, Thesis: "The Politics of Slaver in the Age of Freedom: United States, Brazil, and Cuba, 1787–1846." Supervisor: Rafael Bivar de Marquese
2008–2009
MA in History, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, Dissertation: "The Politics of Slavery in the Empire of Brazil, 1826–1865." Supervisor: Rafael Bivar de Marquese
2003–2007
BA in History, Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil
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2023. "Capital and World Labor: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the Nineteenth Century." In Historia Critica 89: 155–182.
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2022. "Escravidão e as fundações da ordem constitucional moderna: representação, cidadania, soberania, c. 1780–c. 1830." [Slavery and the Foundations of the Modern Constitutional Order: Representation, Citizenship, Sovereignty, c. 1780–c.1830]. In Topoi: Revista de História 23: 699–740.
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2022. "Transcending the Capitalism and Slavery Debate: Slavery and World Geographies of Accumulation." In Theory and Society 52: 677–709.
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2018. "The British Empire and the Suppression of the Slave Trade to Brazil: A Global History Analysis." In Journal of World History 29: 1–36.