John’s research Community, Culture and Conflict: The Lives of Enslaved and Free People of African Decent in Late-Colonial Rio de Janeiro focusses on the vice-regal capital of colonial Brazil. It examines social relations in slave society in order to understand the tension between the social and cultural proximity between slaves and free people amid differences of social hierarchy and legal status. John’s fields of research include colonial Brazil and Latin America. His research interests focus on slavery, empire, and race in Latin America and global context. John’s Ph.D. dissertation Freedom’s Edge: Slavery, Empire, and Power in Colonial Rio de Janeiro, examines the evolving meaning of freedom and manumission across the second half of the eighteenth century in the Atlantic port of Rio de Janeiro.