Dr Beatriz Marín-Aguilera, Lecturer & Derby Fellow in Historical Legacies of Empire, based in the University's Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology has been awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize for Archaeology.
These highly competitive awards, worth £100,000, are for researchers at an early stage of their careers whose work has had international impact and whose future research career is exceptionally promising.
Dr Marín-Aguilera was awarded her Philip Leverhulme Prize to enable her to continue and expand her research highlighting the European slavery of Indigenous groups in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean during the 15th-18th centuries, and on their agency in rebelling and taking countless captives in retaliation, thereby deeply unsettling British, French, and Spanish imperial societies and economies in the Caribbean.
Centring resistance and challenging colonial stereotypes
Her Philip Leverhulme Prize-winning project will analyse different case studies from across the colonial Americas, bringing to the forefront the solidarity networks and joint agency of Indigenous and Afrodescendants in reshaping European empires and colonial frontiers. These activities represent the very first acts of anti-colonial resistance-thus pushing back the origins of anti-colonialism by 500 years.
Through this, Beatriz hopes to continue her work to decolonise Eurocentric narratives on the colonial Caribbean and to fight entrenched colonial stereotypes still affecting Indigenous peoples today.
Beatriz will also partner with Indigenous communities -Taíno and Kalinago from the Caribbean, Mapuche from Chile- and Afro-Indigenous descendants in the UK. The project will also combine archaeological and bioarchaeological research with archival evidence and oral history to map Indigenous and Afro-descendant shared spaces and material practices of solidarity and resistance across the colonial Americas.
On winning the Prize, Dr Marín-Aguilera said "I am thrilled and honoured to have received this prestigious award, and I am very grateful for the continuous support of my mentors, colleagues, friends and family over the years.
"The Philip Leverhulme Prize offers me an exceptional opportunity to take a bold step forward in the comparative study of subaltern rebellions across the colonial Americas and to demonstrate the value of archaeology to empower Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities today."
Professor Bruce Gibson, Head of the Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology Department said: "Dr Beatriz Marín Aguilera has done exceptional research in the fields of indigenous and subaltern archaeology in colonial contexts, and it is wonderful that her work has been recognised with the award of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Beatriz's Leverhulme project will excitingly bring about a new understanding that anti-colonial resistance in the Americas has a much longer history going back to the first arrival of Europeans in the Americas."
Professor Alison Fell, Dean of the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, said: "In the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Liverpool we are proud of the groundbreaking research that has been carried out over recent years into the practices, histories and legacies of slavery and unfree labour. I was therefore delighted to hear that Beatriz Marin-Aguilera has been awarded the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize for her research exploring the solidarity and resistance of Indigenous and Afrodescendants across the colonial Americas.
"Dr Marin-Aguilera's methodology centres the voices of the communities her archaeological research is investigating, voices which have too often been ignored or silenced, and I'll look forward to learning more about these first acts of anti-colonial resistance as her research progresses."
Dr Marín-Aguilera is the first recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology. In 2024, Dr Sean Columb, Reader in Transnational Crime, based in the Law School, won a Prize for his research into migration and asylum in Africa and Europe. The Prizes are chosen from over 350 nominations, and were offered in the following subject areas in 2025: Archaeology, Chemistry, Economics, Engineering, Geography, and Languages and Literatures.
