David Domínguez Cabrera holds a PhD in History and Contemporary Studies from Jaume I University (Spain), where he conducted a doctoral study on slavery and the infrastructural development of Cuban sugar ports in the nineteenth century. His research engages with economic history, the second slavery, and maritime studies across the Atlantic world.

As an affiliated fellow at the KITLV, he is advancing his project 'Longshoremen, Global Commodity Chains, and Logistical Complexes in the Capitalist World-Economy (1750s–1950s)', funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung (Düsseldorf, Germany). This project adopts a comparative perspective on the formation of racialised logistical infrastructures in Cuba and Brazil, tracing their entanglements with global commodity flows and regimes of coerced labour across the long nineteenth century.

He is the author of Trabajo portuario y segunda esclavitud en Cuba (1763-1886). Granada: Comares, 2023.