Visiting Scholars

Prof. Dr. Igor Pérez Tostado
Fellow (since January 2025)
Historisches Seminar
Domplatz 20-22
48143 Münster
E-Mail: Igor Pérez Tostado

CV
Igor Pérez Tostado is an Associate Professor of Early Modern History at Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO) in Seville (Spain), where he has been a faculty member since 2005. He obtained his PhD from the European University Institute in 2004 and has held various academic and research positions, including a postdoctoral fellowships at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His career has been marked by a strong international dimension, reflected in his research stays at institutions like EHESS (Paris), New York University and TU Dresden. Since 2017, he has been the founder and principal investigator of the PAI HUM-1000 research group, which focuses on globalization, violence, and intercultural negotiation. He has also played a crucial role in academic management, coordinating research projects, organizing over 25 international conferences, and leading initiatives within excellence networks such as COREDEX and the Red Columnaria, where he directs the “Massacre and Frontier” node. Since 2024 he is co-director of the MA Program in History and Digital Humanities at UPO.

Research Project
Currently, Pérez Tostado leads the project En los límites de la violencia (III): La violencia lenta de los imperios modernos  funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2021-122319NB-C22). This project examines the long-term impact of structural violence within imperial contexts, with a focus on economic, political, social, and cultural transformations initiated or sponsored by European empires. His research situates slow violence within a comparative and transnational framework, integrating digital humanities and artificial intelligence methodologies to analyze patterns of violence across different case studies. Additionally, he collaborates in international research initiatives, including the French ANR-funded SOLIDAMIN project, which investigates community solidarity networks and diasporas in 17th- and 18th-century Europe.

Publications
Pérez Tostado’s recent publications contribute to the study of transnational history, imperial violence, and migration networks. Among his key works is Ireland and the Iberian Atlantic: Migration, Military and Material Culture (Albatros, 2020), co-edited with Declan M. Downey, which explores Irish-Spanish interactions in a global context. His chapter "The Destruction of the Canary Islands: A Template for the Caribbean Genocide" in The Cambridge World History of Genocide (Cambridge University Press, 2023) examines early modern colonial violence and its long-term consequences. He also edited A Cultural History of Genocide in the Early Modern World (Bloomsbury, 2022). His ongoing research continues to analyze the intersections of warfare, forced displacement, and state-building, develop new digital tools for historical research and contribute to the debates on imperial governance, collective violence, and the historio of globalization in the early modern period.

DR. RAQUEL GIL MONTERO
Fellow (April to June 2024)
Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Einheit und Vielfalt im Recht"
Room 7007
Servatiiplatz 9
48143 Münster
Tel: +49 251 83-20049
Email: raquelgilmontero@conicet.gov.ar

  • CV

    Senior Researcher at CONICET (National Council of Science and Technology). Editor of Población & Sociedad (Social Sciences Review). Associate Investigator of the Maria Sibylla Merian Center Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila). International collaboration: Participation in the program Worlds of Related Coercions in Work (WORCK) and Global Collaboratory on the History of Labor Relations 1500-2000 (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam). Past Vice-President and President of the National Association of Historians (Argentina, 2017-2021). Previous research fellowships from Alexander von Humboldt and John Guggenheim Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Maria Sibylla Merian International Centre Conviavility-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila), German Academic Exchange Service, María Elena Cassiet (John Carter Brown Library), Gerda Henkel Foundation, National Geographic Foundation, Fundación Bilbao Viscaya, Fundación Carolina, Fundación Antorchas, CONICET and Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica. Main research areas: Labor relations, indigenous population, mining, social history of the Andes (16th to 19th centuries).

  • Research Project

    Working under colonial rule. Legal unity and pluralism in seventeenth-century Bolivia

    My research centers on labor relations in seventeenth-century Charcas (present-day Bolivia), a transitional period during Spanish colonial rule (early 1530s until 1825). Within this general frame, I am interested in concrete mechanisms of coercion, labor recruitment and tribute payment, all issues related to colonial obligations that were imposed to indigenous people based on the notion of vassalage. I concentrate on the Seventeenth Century, a period of intense migration and reorganization of the colonial society, and on indigenous population, the principal labor force. Within the framework of a long-term project based on a colonial inspection ordered by the Viceroy of Peru Duke of La Palata (1681-1689), I have until now worked on the most relevant aspects of the practices I have found in labor relations, addressed in a general way the legal framework regulating such practices, and collected information about different norms that coexisted by that time. The research carried out to date suggests that during the Seventeenth Century the gap between practices and legal regulations became more pronounced. For the stay in Münster I propose, then, to reconstruct the web of the different regulatory frameworks that coexisted at that time and its evolution. Or, in other words, to approach more carefully the legal polyphony (and its variations) that was operating in that period.

  • Publications (Selection)

    Gil Montero, Raquel/Salinas, María Laura (Hrsg.): Visitas coloniales en diálogo: Tributación, servicios y prestaciones laborales en la Audiencia de Charcas durante el siglo XVII tardío. Resistencia 2023.

    Gil Montero, Raquel/Oliveto Guillermina: La creación —fallida— de un mundo fiscal. Charcas (actual Bolivia) 1683–1689”, in: Colonial Latin American Review 31 (2022), 479-503.

    Gil Montero, Raqueland/Albiez-Wieck, Sarah: Putting Tribute into Perspective. Negotiating Colonial Obligations in Seventeenth Century Peru, in: Dhau. Jahrbuch für außereuropäische Geschichte 5 (2020), 57-86.

    Gil Montero, Raquel/Tereygeol, Florian: Ore dressing technics in the Andes during the Seventeenth Century: The case of San Antonio del Nuevo Mundo (Lípez, present-day Bolivia), in: International Journal of Historical Archaeology 25 (2020), 65-91.

    Gil Montero, Raquel: Regional Impact of Mining Activity During Colonial Times in the Highlands of Southern Bolivia, in: International Journal of Historical Archaeology 21 (2017), 280-294.

    Gil Montero, Raquel: Free and Unfree Labour in the Colonial Andes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, in:International Review of Social History 56 (2011), 297-318.