Fabrício Prado, an associate professor of history at William & Mary, has been awarded a distinguished fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Since its inception in 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study, or IAS, has been one of the leading centers in the world for research across a variety of disciplines. Each year, more than 250 scholars ranging from postdoctoral fellows to full professors travel to Princeton, New Jersey, to expand their studies and share their findings. Research is conducted in four areas: historical studies, mathematics, natural sciences and social science.

Since its inception in 1930, IAS fellows have included 35 Nobel Laureates, 44 of the 62 Fields Medalists and 23 of the 26 Abel Prize Laureates, in addition to several MacArthur Fellows and Wolf Prize winners. Past faculty have included Albert Einstein and distinguished scholars J. Robert Oppenheimer, Homer A. Thompson and Hermann Weyl.

“Fabrício Prado’s scholarship is richly deserving of this wonderful distinction,” wrote Tuska Benes, chair of William & Mary’s Department of History. “Most impressive to me is that Prof. Prado has worked closely with undergraduates on his research as part of a ‘History Lab,’ a new immersive experience for history students that Prado himself designed. History couldn’t be more delighted.”

Prado’s research focuses on the history of trade and commerce during the early years of the Spanish Empire and how both illegal and legal trade happened in tandem. He also covers economic history, capitalism and the Southern Cone of Latin America. Born in Brazil, Prado lived near the border of Uruguay and Argentina and was fascinated by his visits to relatives across borders and the cultural and societal differences just a few miles away. He credits this upbringing with shaping his understanding of history and passion for the field. 

“I fell in love with the idea of the Spanish Empire,” he said. “I could not see the history of Brazil, Portuguese America, the history of Rio de la Plata, Argentina and Uruguay as separate things.”

Through this, Prado found a framework to better contextualize his research. By blurring the idea of national borders in Latin America and the Caribbean, Prado immersed himself in the idea of the Atlantic World, or the interconnected web of social and financial economies binding nations in Europe, West Africa and North and South America from the 15th to early 19th century. He argues that global trade expansion both in the United States and South America was capitalistic and was enabled by fiscal trade regulations and privileges for the slave trade, the latter of which was central to growing nations in the age of revolutions.

“It’s not just about producing goods or selling human beings. We are talking about fiscal, financial regulations that enable capitalism to flourish,” Prado added.

Prado has written extensively on the subject in his previous two books, “Colonial Sacramento: The Southern Tip of Portuguese America” and “Edge of Empire: Atlantic Networks and Revolution in Bourbon Rio de la Plata.” His current book project, which he’ll be researching at the IAS, examines the commercial linkages connecting U.S. port cities to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions.

When Prado was notified he had been accepted to the institution, he felt intimidated, but he takes pride in his studies and how this recognition validates his work.

“They are really keen in saying, ‘You are here because you are onto something that has potential,’” he said regarding the Institute. “(They) leave us with no preoccupations so we can devote our time to find knowledge.”

Prado credits William & Mary for helping to further his research, giving him the autonomy to travel around the world to places like Spain, Buenos Aires, Massachusetts and elsewhere to analyze archives and overcome historiographic or historical roadblocks.

“I’m very thankful to William & Mary for that,” he said. “William & Mary supported my research in very generous ways, without putting any barriers of where to go (or) what to do.”

Additionally, he is thankful for the critical support he’s received from both his graduate and undergraduate students, who collaborated with him on research with massive amounts of data.

William & Mary is known for offering the most personal education of any public institution in the United States, and data is one of the main initiatives of the university’s Vision 2026 strategic plan. The university strives to prepare students to lead in a data-rich world and become thought leaders across disciplines that study human societies, cultures and experiences.

In his Global Americans history labs, Prado would work alongside students in compartmentalizing data, logging ship arrivals and departures, qualifying cargo and identifying the captain, working as a united front and eager to discover new findings.

“They came to me wanting to participate in research, and I created this space for them,” he said of his students. “Their willingness, their thirst for knowledge helped me a lot. We completed approximately 10,000 voyages (in this database).”

With the help of his students and through further collaboration, Prado found evidence that the trading of slaves and trading of commodities was often intertwined. Whether it’s at the Institute or William & Mary, Prado’s work is essential in expanding knowledge of trade and commerce between the U.S. and Latin America.

“The students here were critical in helping me to conduct and collaborate this research with massive amounts of data that, by myself, would have taken much, much, much longer.”