Gabriel de Avilez Rocha is the Vasco da Gama Assistant Professor of History and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University. He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 2016. His work centers on the social, environmental, and maritime history of colonialism and slavery in the early modern Atlantic world, with a focus on the linkages between Atlantic Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Iberia. His current book project, The Atlantic Acceleration: Making Empire from the Global Commons in the Long Fifteenth Century, examines how popular struggles over shared ecologies shaped empire and insurgency in the early Atlantic. His articles and essays have appeared in the Colonial Latin American Review, Early American Studies, Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies: A Critical Anthology, and other volumes and publications. Major teaching and research interests include early modern Iberian imperial worlds, the Black Atlantic, environmental history and ecocriticism, microhistory methods, and community engagement.
