Q&A with Daniel Morales-Armstrong, 2025-26 Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow
The Latinx Project announces the selection of Daniel Morales-Armstrong as the 2025-26 Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow. Named after the late Miriam Jiménez Román, a pioneer in the field of Afro-Latinx Studies, this fellowship supports post-doctoral candidates and junior scholars whose research advances the study of Afro-Latinx communities in the U.S.
Tell us about your work and how your work contributes to contemporary Afro-Latinx studies.
My work focuses on the stories of enslaved and newly freed Black people in Puerto Rico in the 1800s - particularly how they engaged in forms of freedom-making in spite of and beyond their enslavement - and how they shaped the very meaning of freedom in the colony. In centering the fullness of personhood of the people whose stories I tend to, with the dignity and respect they deserve, the work I do is both about "what happened then" and how we, in the present, relate to the Black people who lived generations before us. In that vein, I am increasingly focused on the methods of this work - how Afro-Latinxs, as folks with Black roots in Latin America, can generatively and ethically engage with the records of our Black ancestors despite the violence of the archives of slavery. To do so, I draw on approaches and frameworks from Africana and Puerto Rican studies, history, geography, ethnomusicology, and the digital humanities. In relation to the broader field of Afro-Latinx Studies, I work to emphasize both the importance and possibilities of researching Black Puerto Rican histories and their meaning to Black DiaspoRicans today as part of the recognition of the "transnational discourse or identity field linking Black Latin Americans and Latin@s across national and regional lines" (Jiménez Román and Flores, 2010, p. 11). Through my research, teaching, and publications, I argue that these linkages exist, and deserve attention in the field, across temporal lines, as well.
What ideas do you have to enrich the NYU community?
I am looking forward to connecting with folks at NYU who are thinking creatively about methods and to opening up space to include people from New York City communities beyond the academy to take part in those conversations.
What does it mean to be named this year's Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow?
It is a great honor for me to be named the 2025-2026 Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow, and feels like a full circle moment. I began thinking about the ideas that would come to shape my scholarship - and what I see as my life's work - in the context of my lived experiences as a Black DiaspoRican in New York City. After reading the Afro-Latin@ Reader, which both made me feel seen and pushed my thinking in generative ways, I had the pleasure of meeting Jiménez-Román and participating in some of the Afro-Latin@ Forum's meetings. I remember some of the conversations about developing mentorship pipelines for folks looking to do this work, of the supportive and thoughtful engagements with not only Miriam but other Forum members when I was making sense of graduate school applications. These experiences pushed me to think about methods - how I wanted to answer the questions I had about my own experiences, people, and history - and the need to do so expansively. In the years since, I've gotten my PhD and become a historian. I find myself, once again, in a moment in which I am thinking expansively about methods, and how to make them accessible, in service of telling the stories of Black Puerto Ricans who have been abstracted, obscured, and distorted by the archival record and the myth of the "great Puerto Rican family." I am reminded of the impact of Jiménez-Román's work developing not only the field but the network of inter- and intra-generational mentorship that has personally impacted my trajectory - and am grateful to be able to continue it in the name of her legacy.
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About Daniel Morales-Armstrong
Daniel Morales-Armstrong is a Black DiaspoRican historian and educator from The Bronx whose work focuses on slavery and emancipation in Puerto Rico. Morales-Armstrong earned his joint PhD in History and Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2024, after which he joined the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro) at CUNY Hunter College as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. His scholarship examines how formerly enslaved Puerto Ricans (“libertos”) resisted the three-year forced labor mandate that followed emancipation in the colony, as well as the silences surrounding these acts of refusal. Morales-Armstrong is working on a series of methods essays focused on how Black Puerto Ricans in the present - in the diaspora and the archipelago - relate to and engage the archives of Puerto Rican slavery. His research has been generously funded by the Ford Foundation, the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, Centro, and now, The Latinx Project.
About the Latinx Project at NYU
The Latinx Project at New York University explores and promotes U.S. Latinx Art, Culture and Scholarship through creative and interdisciplinary programs. Founded in 2018, it serves as a platform to foster critical public programming and for hosting artists and scholars. The Latinx Project is especially committed to examining and highlighting the multitude of Latinx identities as central to developing a more inclusive and equitable vision of Latinx Studies.
Supporters
The 2025-26 Miriam Jiménez Román Fellowship is made possible with support from the Mellon Foundation.