The core team is composed of seven researchers: the PI, three postdoctoral researchers, and three PhD researchers. The project also welcomes several research associates from other case-studies who collaborate in the same framework.
Since 2022, he holds the chair for History of Latin America at the Leibniz University Hannover. He has studies in history and philosophy, and in 2012 was awarded a PhD in History of Latin America at the Free University of Berlin. His research focuses on political, social, and legal history of Latin America and the Iberian World, with regional specialization in Chile, Brazil, and the Philippines.
Email: manuel.bastias@hist.uni-hannover.de
Camilla de Freitas Macedo holds an MA (2016) and a PhD (2022) in history. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the legal history of indigenous lands in Brazil.
Her main research approaches are those that connect land and social relationships, considering law as one among many other facets of social relationships. Her academic background took place mainly in the University of the Basque Country, the region that is now her focus for postdoc research. Therefore, she applies this social approach to analyse the legal history of lands in the Basque Country (Spain), during the early modern period (17th – 18th centuries).
Email: camilla.de.freitas.macedo@hist.uni-hannover.de
Roger Lee de Jesus holds a PhD in History (2021), with a thesis on the role of the governor D. João de Castro in the construction of the Portuguese Estado da Índia (1545-1548). His MA (2012) in Early Modern History (University of Coimbra) is a case study on the second siege to the Portuguese fortress of Diu (1546), in India.
He is interested in the history of the Portuguese Empire and its presence in Asia from political, social, economic-financial and military perspective, especially in the implementation and adaptation of European institutions and warfare (16th-17th centuries). He is the co-founder of the Portuguese podcast Falando de História.
Email: roger.pessoa.de.jesus@hist.uni-hannover.de
Marlen Palma holds a PhD in History from the University of Salamanca (2025), with a thesis on the indigenous nobility in Oaxaca, Mexico (caciques, cacicas, and cacicazgos in the Valley), between the 16th–18th centuries. She also completed a Master’s in Digital Humanities at the University Pablo de Olavide and a Master’s in Advanced Studies and Research in History at the University of Salamanca. She holds a BA in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Her research focuses on the indigenous social structures, the shaping of interethnic relations and the construction of the “other”, as well as the representation of space and the configuration of territories in the Central Valleys of Mexico during the colonial period.
Email: marlen.palma-silva@hist.uni-hannover.de
Sarah Papa is a certified Brazilian lawyer since her graduation in Law in 2018 at the Federal University of Ceará, where she also did a Master in Law in 2020. She is now a PhD candidate in Law at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main.
She is specialized in legal history of colonial Brazil (17th and 18th century), having worked with a wide range of topics, such as public law, family law, moral theology, and canon law. As a PhD researcher at IberLAND, Sarah studies conflicts over lands rights in Portuguese America. She is particularly interested in the interconnections between religion, public and civil law in the resolution of agrarian conflicts in colonial Brazil, and how this local normativity is related to the European legal tradition of the ius commune.
Email: sarah.limao.papa@hist.uni-
Alina Rodríguez holds a Master’s degree in Global History from the Freie Universität Berlin and a Bachelor’s degree in History from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
She is currently working on her doctoral dissertation, which focuses on rights over land, resource extraction, and uncultivated land in New Spain during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Her broader interests include early modern cultural history and media history.
Email: alina.rodriguez.sanchez@hist.uni-hannover.de
Edson Edy S.C. de Brito has a Master’s degree in Early Modern History by the University of Coimbra (Portugal, 2012) with a thesis on the Portuguese fiscal administration on the Atlantic´s archipelagos.
Researcher since 2013 at the Institute of Cultural Heritage (IPC) in Cape Verde where he published several works related with tangible and intangible cultural heritage. His main focus is the administrative history and land access of Cape Verde (15th-18th centuries), and Morna as a musical world cultural heritage.
Email: edson.soares.correia.de.brito@hist.uni-hannover.de
Íñigo Ena Sanjuán was awarded a PhD in history at the European University Institute in 2022 with a thesis on state formation in the former Crown of Aragon in the 18 th century. Since April 2023 he is an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at Leibniz Universität Hannover.
Although his main research interests are political, fiscal, and financial history, he has recently widened the scope to legal and environmental history, always maintaining a markedly local perspective. His current research focuses on the Pyrenean pastures located between Spain and France.
Email: inigo.enasanjuan@hist.uni-hannover.de
Patricia Souza de Faria is Associate Professor at the Department of History at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. PhD in History at Federal Fluminense University with a thesis published with the name “A Conquista das almas do Oriente: Franciscanos, Catolicismo e Poder Colonial Português em Goa (1540-1740)”. Post-doctoral studies at the University of Évora (Portugal) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (France).
Her research themes are related to the Portuguese Empire in Asia, especially the religious orders, the Inquisition, and slave populations in Goa (16th and 17th centuries).
Her current research focuses on land administered by the Jesuits in Goa and Bassein.
Email: patricia@carvano.com.br
Thiago H. Mota is Professor of African History at the Federal University of Viçosa (Brazil). He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania (USA); a Marie-Curie Visiting Scholar at the Cheikh Anta Diop University (Senegal) and a CAPES/AUL Visiting Scholar at the University Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique). He also attended as a non-resident consultant at the Nanjing Agricultural University (China). Currently, Dr. Mota is a non-resident member of the Center for History at the University of Lisbon (Portugal) and holds a Research Productivity Grant (Brazil).
His interest lay in the connection between Islamic expansion and land ownership in Early Modern West Africa, focusing on the region of nowadays Guinea-Bissau.
Email: thiago.mota@ufv.br
Tomás Catepillán Tessi has a PhD in History at El Colegio de México with a thesis on state formation in Chile and postdoctoral studies at the University of Bristol.
He is currently working on a research project about indigenous identitites, political organisation, and land tenure in the Chilean central zone between the 18th and 19th centuries.
Email: tomas.catepillan@gmail.com
Carolina Jurado was awarded a PhD in History at Buenos Aires University (Argentina) with a thesis on the impact of Spanish rule on the leadership hierarchies and territorial control of the Aymara groups in North Potosí (Charcas, Viceroyalty of Peru) during the 16th and 17th centuries.
She is a permanent researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and teaches Latin American History at the Department of History of Facultad de Filosofía y Letras of Buenos Aires University. She is currently leading a research group funded by the University of Buenos Aires related to the analysis of territoriality, royal agents, and administration of justice in Charcas, at the beginning of colonial rule.
Her research focuses on colonial social relations linked to land ownership, including the legal, political, and economic perspectives, royal land claims during the processes of regularization or composiciones de tierras, local royal agents, and indigenous agency in the región of Charcas (Vicerroyalty of Peru) during the 16th-17th centuries, also focusing on methodological approaches to colonial documentary.
Email: carolinajurado@conicet.gov.ar
Academia.edu | CONICET | IHAYA
Alessandro Buono was awarded a PhD in Modern and Contemporary History from the University of Florence and was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at EHESS in Paris. He is currently an Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Pisa.
His main research interest lies in the relationship between personal identity and ownership regimes in early modern societies. In recent years, he has focused particularly on the relationship between the status of things and that of people, starting from the issue of vacant inheritances and abandoned property.
Email: alessandro.buono@unipi.it
Since 2014, he is Associate Professor at the Law School of the Federal University of Ceará (Brazil), of which he is currently the Dean (2023-2027). Researcher of the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq). He holds a LLM (Federal University of Ceará, 2011) and a PhD (University of São Paulo, 2013) in Legal History and Habilitation in Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (University of São Paulo, 2024).
His research is focused on Legal History of Colonial Brazil and early modern European Legal Literature (15th-18th centuries).
Email: gustavocesarcabral@ufc.br
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After graduating from school, Sonja Westphal trained as an industrial clerk first. Afterwards she studied media management and worked as an online marketing manager for ten years. She has already lived one year in the southern states of the USA during her 11th grade in school. Also during her media management studies Sonja spent her ERASMUS semester at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia in Spain. Therefore, she has always enjoyed working in an international environment.
She is very happy and proud to support the IberLAND project team in their administration processes.
Thomas Czerner studied History, Political Science and Social Psychology at the Universities of Hanover and Salamanca and holds a PhD in Medieval History. He has worked in various international research projects, such as Papal charters of the early and high Middle Ages, where he worked in the sub-project Iberia Pontificia on the relations of the papacy with the historical landscapes of Spain and Portugal up to the year 1198. He is currently administrative coordinator in the BMBF-funded joint project Maria Sibylla Merian de Estudios Latinoamericanos Avanzados (CALAS) and in the EU project Connected Worlds: the Caribbean, Origin of Modern World.
His research interests include Papal and Ecclesiastical History, the Political and Diplomatic History of the late Middle Ages with a focus on letters and letterbooks, Communication History and Urban History in the late medieval Holy Roman Empire.
Elisa-Margaux Bongartz (she/her) holds a BA Hon degree in Drama and English Literature from Kingston University, London, and an MA degree in Atlantic Studies from Leibniz University, Hanover. She is currently pursuing a PhD, focusing on political women in Chile during the immigration waves of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Her research interests include women’s and Gender History, as well as the history of feminism and cultural history.
Next to her academic work, she also publishes her creative writing, works on short films and in theatre.
She is excited about assisting the project members in their work and the experiences that come with it.
Léon Charlé holds a Bachelor’s degree in History and Politics from Leibniz University and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Atlantic Studies and History.
He has been working as a student assistant for the professor of the Chair of “History of Latin America and the Caribbean” since his bachelor’s degree and in this role has contributed to numerous projects in research, editing and organisation.
He is pleased to participate in the IberLAND project, as legal history is an unfamiliar subject area and he is eager to learn about new fields of research. He also enjoys supporting the other researchers in their work.
Marcus M. de Melo is a student pursuing a Master’s degree in Atlantic Studies at Leibniz Universität Hannover. He completed his undergraduate studies at the State University of Maringá (UEM – Brazil), where he obtained a degree in history education.
During his time at UEM, he actively participated in two projects: the Dynamic Interdisciplinary Museum (MUDI) and a research and development project focused on indigenous history, which aimed to enhance history courses at universities in Paraná. In both projects, Marcus contributed to the organization and research efforts, supporting his fellow faculty members.
He finds great joy in assisting project members and helping them accomplish their goals.
