Judith Mansilla

Bio

Dr. Judith Mansilla is the department's faculty advisor. In addition to helping you figure out what courses to take to complete your history major or minor, Dr. Mansilla can also talk with you about how to get a job with your history major, how to find internships that will boost your resume, and how to tackle preparations for graduate school. You can reach Dr. Mansilla and schedule an appointment via jmansill@fiu.edu.

Professor Mansilla’s research interests focus on Colonial Latin America, the Andean region, and the Atlantic World. Her work integrates environmental, political, social, economic, and legal history approaches. Her current book manuscript, “Firm Foundations: Rebuilding the Early Modern State in Lima, Peru After the Earthquake of 1687,” examines the political and material reconstruction of Lima after a major earthquake hit this colonial center of the Spanish empire in the late seventeenth century.

Winner of FIU’s Best Dissertation and Worlds Ahead Graduate Awards, Professor Mansilla is already working on her next research project that examines the social limits of crime, corruption, and dishonest behavior in early modern Latin America. Supported by Harvard University's History Project Research Award, FIU's Broad Research Fellowship, Tinker Foundation's Research Grant, Mellon Foundation-Humanities Edge Research Project, and the Laura Bassi Fellowship, Dr. Mansilla has conducted research in various archives in Peru, Spain, and US. She has presented her research findings in several conferences in US and abroad. She has also published her work in various academic journals and edited volumes, in both English and Spanish.

She teaches various undergraduate classes covering diverse topics of Latin America History, from pre-Hispanic to the national period. In her teaching, she emphasizes the role of Latin American within the current process of globalization, which started when Europeans colonized this region. In her undergraduate seminars, she presents topics on Early Modern Western Civilization, specifically Latin America and Western Europe.