Manoel Rendeiro Neto

Manoel Rendeiro (he/his/him) holds a B.A. and a teaching degree in History from the University of Brasília, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American History from the University of California, Davis, with a specialization in African Diaspora Studies. Currently, Manoel is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of History and Affiliate Fellow at the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University. Beginning in the fall of 2026, Manoel will assume the position of Assistant Professor of Colonial Latin American History at Yale University.

Manoel's research focuses on the role of environmental knowledge in empire-building, ethno-racial stratification, and autonomous territorialization in the emergence of an Afro-Indigenous Amazon. Besides working on his book manuscript "Imperial Tides, Runaway Rivers: Cultivating Knowledge, Labor, and Sovereignty in the Atlantic Amazon (1750-1850),” he is developing articles related to waterscape engineering interventions and slavery in 18th century French Guiana; and Indigenous Amazonian women’s role as commercial agents on inter-village trade of domestic produce during Portuguese colonization. His research has been supported by the Conference on Latin American History, the Dumbarton Oaks in conjunction with the Mellon Foundation, the Huntington Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the Luso-American Development Foundation, UC Humanities Research Institute, among others.

Born and raised in the Brazilian Amazon, Manoel is committed to research projects on traditional Afro-Indigenous Amazonian communities and their histories to foster the development of growing interdisciplinary studies about the largest rainforest in the world from a transimperial historical perspective from early modern times to present day challenges.