Professor of North American History & Culture, Leiden University
Damian Pargas is Professor of North American History & Culture at Leiden University as well as director of the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) in Middelburg. His research focuses mainly on the history of slavery and its aftermath in the American South. He is the author of two monographs–The Quarters and the Fields: Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South (University Press of Florida, 2010), and Slavery and Forced Migration in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2014)–as well as three edited volumes and numerous scholarly articles. At present he is working on a comparative study of fugitive slaves in North America between 1775 and 1860. For this project he received an NWO Vidi grant, titled “Beacons of Freedom: Slave Refugees in North America, 1800-1860.” A forthcoming book on this topic will be published with Cambridge University Press in 2021.
In Leiden Damian teaches courses on American history, African diaspora migrations, and Atlantic history. At the RIAS he serves as executive director and helps organize American studies conferences and events throughout the year. He has been a NASA board member since 2010.