Nancy E. van Deusen

Nancy E. van Deusen is the Daniel R. Woolf Professor of Humanities at Queen's University's Department of History. She holds a prestigious Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada and was a 2023 Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University. Her work focuses on colonial Latin America, the Iberian Atlantic World, and early modern global history, with specialties in Indigenous slavery, gender relations, and female Catholic spirituality in colonial Peru.

Her research has been supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant for the project 'The Disappearance of the Past: Native American Slavery and the Making of the Early Modern World.' This project examines how archival practices obscured Indigenous slavery's prevalence in historical narratives. Key publications include Global Indios (2015), exploring Indigenous legal struggles in Spain, and Embodying the Sacred (2017), analyzing Lima's religious culture through women's spiritual practices.

• Awards and Recognition: Antonine Tibesar Prize (2023), Queen’s Excellence in Research Award (2019), Bruce Mansfield Prize (2010).
• Supervision: Advises students on colonial Latin American history, Indigenous slavery, gender, and archival studies. Current advisees include Megan Griffiths (Ph.D.) and Naomi Makowska (co-supervised Ph.D.).
• Research Themes: Legal history, Indigenous agency, religious culture, and the intersection of gender and power in colonial contexts.

Her work often bridges global and local perspectives, recentering marginalized voices in colonial archives. Ongoing projects include an analysis of Indigenous slavery's erasure from historical discourse and an exploration of sacred objects in colonial Lima's religious practices.