Department of History

Héctor Linares is a four-year PhD candidate in History, specializing in Early Modern Global History, Race and Ethnicity, and Latin America. His dissertation explores cases of Indigenous and people of African descent who successfully negotiated their socioeconomic and political status with the Spanish Crown and achieved aristocratic titles, positions, and honors. He is the author of twenty-one peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and he has edited five books on Spanish nobility, ecclesiastical elites, and the Spanish Empire with some of the most prominent European publishers, including Silex, Doce Calles, Palermo University Press, and Brill. His research has been funded by numerous institutions, namely: the European Commission, the Casa de Velázquez, the Folger Library, the John Carter Brown Library, the Center for Humanities and Information, and the Spanish government. At Penn State, he works under the direction of Drs. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia and Amanda L. Scott. He is also serving as a member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at the Renaissance Society of America.