Mariana Dias Paes

Professor Dias Paes' research focuses on race, citizenship, colonialism, and the law in former Portuguese colonies in Africa and the Americas (mostly what are now Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, and Guinea Bissau) between 1750 and 1930. Her work demonstrates that colonial courts were a key arena in which Africans contested colonialism and asserted their rights to freedom, landed property, and improved working conditions. These judicial disputes have wide-ranging implications for how we think about histories of emancipation, citizenship, decolonization, and race. Her studies are unearthing information regarding the participation of Africans in multiple legal systems, not only in Portuguese courts, but also in African courts that functioned outside Portuguese control. She is also interested in public outreach and digital humanities projects. Having worked in various archives, she came to the conclusion that extremely important historical records are currently almost inaccessible due to storage conditions, and there is insufficient information regarding what these records include. To address some of these issues, she led the digitization of circa 10,000 colonial court records housed in the Cape Verde National Archives; and the organization and preservation of the endangered colonial judicial collections of the National Archives of Guinea Bissau and the Portuguese National Archives.