Ramona Negrón is a postdoctoral researcher at the KITLV, working on the project ‘How slaves became citizens: Proto-citizenship, empowerment, and inequality in the Age of Emancipation, 1770-1930’. Her research focuses on the transition from slavery to citizenship in the Dutch Caribbean during the Age of Emancipation.

She earned her BA in Colonial History (2018) and her Research MA in Colonial History (cum laude, 2020) at Leiden University, before completing her PhD there in 2025. Her dissertation examined Dutch entrepreneurship in the Spanish Americas from 1580 to 1700. She specializes in colonial, maritime, and slavery history. 

Ramona is editor of Holland Historisch Tijdschrift and works as a freelance researcher.

Selected Publications

Negrón, Ramona, blog 'Boekpresentatie The Dutch Transatlantic Slave Trade. New Methods, Perspectives, and Sources bij Het Scheepvaartmuseum', 24 February 2025.

Negrón, Ramona, Jessica den Oudsten, Camilla de Koning & Karwan Fatah-Black (eds.), The Dutch transatlantic slave trade; New methods, perspectives and sources. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2025.

Negrón, Ramona, Karwan Fatah-Black & Camilla de Koning, ‘What is manumission? The process and its resulting dependencies’, Esclavages & Post-Esclavages 9: 1-21, 2024.

Negrón, Ramona, Roxana Chandali, Coretta Bakker-Wijbrans, Endi Kartokromo & Cor Revet, Het koloniaal en slavernijverleden van Gouda; Een verkenning. Gouda: Streekarchief Midden-Holland, 2024.

Negrón, Ramona & Jessica den Oudsten, De grootste slavenhandelaren van Amsterdam; Over Jochem Matthijs en Coenraad Smitt. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2022.

Negrón, Ramona, ‘The ambiguity of freedom: Kinship and motivations for manumission in eighteenth-century Suriname’, Slavery & Abolition 43-4: 758-778, 2022.

Negrón, Ramona & Cátia Antunes, ‘The Dutch republic and the Spanish slave trade, 1580-1690’, TSEG 19-2:17-44, 2022.