Marcela Echeverri Munoz

Marcela Echeverri Muñoz is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Yale University, affiliated with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her scholarship bridges history, anthropology, and political theory, with a focus on Latin America, the Atlantic World, and the Spanish Empire. She is recognized for her interdisciplinary approach to understanding political subjectivities, state formation, and social transformation during the Age of Revolutions.

• PhD in Latin American and Caribbean History, New York University, 2008
• MA in History of the Hispanic World, Fundación MAPFRE-Tavera and CSIC, Madrid, 2006
• MA in Social and Political Theory, The New School for Social Research, 2001
• BA in Anthropology, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, 1997

Her research centers on the interplay of race, gender, law, and political theory in colonial and 19th-century Latin America. She investigates how enslaved and Indigenous peoples navigated imperial and republican transitions, particularly through royalist affiliations. Her work challenges peripheral narratives of Spanish America in Atlantic slavery studies, positioning the region as a central site of abolitionist and constitutional experimentation.

The trends in her recent publications reveal a sustained focus on slavery, abolition, and political transformation in the Spanish American mainland. She analyzes how anti-slavery movements were intertwined with republicanism, citizenship, and state formation, especially in Gran Colombia. Her scholarship spans legal history, Atlantic processes, and transimperial dynamics, often highlighting marginalized voices in revolutionary contexts. She frequently contributes to major reference works and edited volumes on Atlantic revolutions and Latin American independence.

Her scientific awards and fellowships reflect her standing in the field:

• James Alexander Robertson Prize
• Michael Jiménez Prize
• Bolton-Johnson Prize Honorable Mention
• Yale Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication
• Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship
• MacMillan Research Fellow, Yale
• Mellon Residential Fellow, CUNY
• NEH Summer Institute Participant, Johns Hopkins
• Fellowships from John Carter Brown Library, CSIC, Fundación Mapfre, and Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia

Echeverri has secured significant research grants from Harvard’s Atlantic History Seminar, CUNY Research Foundation, and Yale. She has co-edited special issues on Gran Colombian history and Spanish American abolition, and led key academic initiatives including the Race and Slavery in the Atlantic World Working Group and the Early Modern Empires Workshop at Yale. Though student advising is not explicitly detailed, her role as a senior scholar implies mentorship of graduate students.

She is affiliated with several research networks and has been a visiting scholar at institutions such as Freie Universität Berlin. Her ongoing book project on Gran Colombian slavery underscores her commitment to redefining the hemispheric significance of Latin American abolition. She remains an active contributor to both scholarly and pedagogical conversations in Atlantic and Latin American history.