Lucas Koutsoukos-Chalhoub

Lucas Koutsoukos-Chalhoub (PhD, University of Michigan) is a historian of Latin America specializing in race, politics, and power in Brazil. His dissertation, The Black Angel: Gregório Fortunato and the Politics of Race in Twentieth-Century Brazil (2025), uses the life of Getúlio Vargas's Black bodyguard to trace how race became entangled with Vargas-era populism — and to challenge his reduction to a footnote in Vargas's downfall. His broader work spans the African diaspora, including a Slavery & Abolition article on the illegal importation of Africans to New Orleans, and a recent piece on race and whiteness in Vargas-era policy. He is now researching "meritocracy" as a vehicle for structural racism in Brazil.

Beyond research, Lucas teaches, mentors through Brazilian Historians in the United States, and co-edits Brasil por Brazil. He has presented at the Brazilian Studies Association, Harvard's Afro-Latin American Research Institute, and the Associação Nacional de História, with support from the University of Michigan Center for Latin American Studies and the Tinker Foundation.