Mariana Dias Paes is a specialist in the legal history of the South Atlantic (Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, and Guinea Bissau), between the 18^th and the 20^th centuries. Her research is situated at the intersection between law, history, and social sciences. Her work focuses on colonial courts as 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.

Her first book, Escravidão e direito: o estatuto jurídico dos escravos no Brasil oitocentista, 1860-1888 [Slavery and the Law: Enslaved Persons’ Legal Status in Nineteenth- Century Brazil,1860-1888] (2019) examines lawsuits filed by free and enslaved Africans in Brazil. Through a comprehensive analysis of court cases, parliamentary debates, and legal doctrine, the book argues that African litigants shaped slavery law and emancipation. Her second book, Esclavos y tierras entre posesión y títulos: la construcción social del derecho de propiedad en Brasil, siglo XIX [Enslaved People and Land between Possession and Title Deeds: Social Construction of Property Law in Brazil, Nineteenth Century] (2021), she analyzes ownership of enslaved people and land in nineteenth- century Brazil. In contrast to scholars who have interpreted possession as an extra-legal form of acquiring property, the book shows that possession was the main legal institution of the Portuguese Early Modern law that was in force in colonial territories. It also shows the close links between ownership of enslaved persons and land, and argues that one cannot be understood without the other.

She is currently working on a third book project focusing on West Central Africans’ judicial claims for freedom, ownership, and citizenship in Brazil, Angola, and Portugal in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries.

Dias Paes is also interested in public outreach and digital humanities projects. She led the project “Global Legal History on the Ground: Court Cases in African Archives.” from 2022 to 2024. In the framework of the project, she led the digitization of over 10,000 court cases stored at the Cape Verde National Archives; the preservation, treatment, and description of the court case collection of the National Archives of Guinea Bissau; and the description of the funds “Juízo das Apelações Cíveis e Agravos” and “Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa” at the Portuguese National Archives. Between 2017 and 2023, together with Mariana Candido and Juelma Ngãla (ISCED-Benguela, Angola), she organized the court cases collection of the Benguela District Court (Angola).

She has published extensively on issues pertaining judicial disputes over land and labor in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. She also published articles in flagship journals such as Law & History Review, Atlantic Studies, Administory-Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsgeschichte.

Education

• PhD, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, 2018
• MA, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, 2014
• BA, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2010