Paulo Da Rocha Pérez
DPhil Student
Email: paulo.darochaperez@lincoln.ox.ac.uk
Research Topic: 'Hispanic Liberalism and the Question of the Empire, 1810-1837'
Supervisor: Eduardo Posada-Carbo
My current research explores Spanish and Spanish-American liberals’ views on the Spanish Empire and America’s place within it (i.e., the “American Question”) during the collapse of Spain's mainland American possessions and its aftermath. This research thus spans from the eruption of independence insurgencies in America and Spanish liberals’ inclusion of America as an integral part of the Spanish nation under the Constitution of 1812 to the reversal of this policy with the expulsion of overseas deputies from the 1836-1837 Spanish Cortes. By tracing both groups’ evolving positions and how their disagreements affected their relationship, this project asks how Hispanic liberalism, with its universalist, egalitarian ethos, was articulated in a context of imperial politics and the emergence of both nationalism and imaginations of an international liberal movement. Geographically, my research will focus on liberals from Spain, Colombia, Peru and Cuba while also following them during periods of exile in Britain, the US, etc.
I underwent my undergraduate studies in history at UCL between 2022 and 2025, where I quickly became interested in how revolutionary and/or egalitarian ideologies engage with exploitative and exclusionary structures. My undergraduate dissertation explored the thought of Hinton Rowan Helper, an abolitionist from the American South, and the reflection of similar anti-slavery sentiments in the Tennessee Civil War Veterans' Questionnaires. I then shifted my attention to Hispanic liberalism during the collapse of the Spanish Empire and studied the MSt in Global and Imperial History at Oxford between 2025 and 2026. My MSt dissertation was concerned with the same topic as my DPhil research, but for the shorter period of 1810-1814 and focusing only on Spain, Colombia and Peru.
I am a citizen of Spain and a local of Vigo, Galicia.
Prizes, Scholarships, and Funding:
I was awarded the Anthony Gwilliams Scholarship for my MSt. My DPhil studies are being generously funded by the Clarendon Fund.
