Karwan Fatah-Black is senior researcher at KITLV and university lecturer at Leiden University. Karwan is the project leader of the KITLV research project ‘How slaves became citizens: Proto-citizenship, empowerment, and inequality in the Age of Emancipation, 1770-1930’.

Since completing his PhD (2013) he has studied the history of the Atlantic world, enslavement and emancipation strategies. With museums and heritage institutions he works on creating new narratives about the colonial past and post-colonial citizenship.

Karwan is series editor of the Amsterdam University Press bookseries Slavery and Emancipation.

Selected Publications

Fatah-Black, Karwan, Ramona Négron, Jessica den Oudsten & Camilla de Koning, The Dutch Transatlantic slave trade: New methods, perspectives, and sources. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024.

Fatah-Black, Karwan, Lauren Lauret & Joris van den Tol, Serving the chain? De Nederlandsche Bank and the last decades of slavery, 1814-1863. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2022.

Fatah-Black, Karwan, Slavernij en beschaving: Geschiedenis van een paradox. Amsterdam: Ambo/Anthos, 2021.

Fatah-Black, Karwan, White lies and black markets: Evading metropolitan authority in colonial Suriname, 1650-1800. Boston/Leiden: Brill 2015.