Diego Javier Luis, PhD

Historian, Fencer, Photographer

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Welcome! I am a historian, writer, and educator by trade. I have dedicated my professional life to unearthing colonial histories centered in Latin America and the Pacific World. By day, I am the Rohrbaugh Family Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University.

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Outside of the archive and the classroom, I am either roaming with a Nikon in hand or in a fencing salle.

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My first book, The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History, came out in 2024 with Harvard University Press. The book has been recognized with the 2024 Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize, the 2025 Howard F. Cline Prize in Mexican History from the Latin American Studies Association, and the 2025 Forum on Early-Modern Empires and Global Interactions Book Prize.

 

I am currently working on three other book-length projects on 1) the early modern Black Pacific World, 2) the colonial history of early modern Spanish fencing, and 3) a family history from China and West Africa to Cuba and then the U.S., based on my grandmother's memoir.