Amy Chazkel

Amy Chazkel is the Bernard Hirschhorn Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Columbia University. A historian of Brazil, her work bridges urban humanities, law and society, and sociolegal history, focusing on crime, policing, slavery, and post-abolition societies in the Atlantic world. Her scholarship examines the intersection of urban public life and legal systems in post-colonial Brazil.

• PhD in History, Yale University (2002)
• MA in History, Yale University (1996)
• BA in International Affairs, George Washington University (1991)

Her research explores clandestine lotteries, nighttime urban governance, and forced labor in 19th- and 20th-century Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of Laws of Chance and co-editor of The Rio Reader, with current work on the cultural history of urban nighttime supported by ACLS, NEH, and the American Philosophical Society.

Awards include NEH Fellowship (2018), ACLS Fellowship (2017), and multiple grants from CUNY, CAPES, and Harvard. She serves on editorial boards for Radical History Review and Law and History Review.