Dr Diogo de Carvalho Cabral

Assistant Professor in Environmental History

Dr Diogo de Carvalho Cabral is an environmental historian interested in the role of nonhuman agencies – including but not restricted to animals – in Brazil’s history, as well as the reframed temporalities they entail. He’s the author of Na Presença da Floresta: Mata Atlântica e História Colonial (‘In the Forest’s Presence: Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and Colonial History’, Rio de Janeiro, 2014) and co-edited More-Than-Human Histories of Latin America and the Caribbean (London, 2024) with André Vasques Vital and Margarita Gascón. Dr de Carvalho Cabral’s current project, designed in collaboration with the art historian Concepción Cortés Zulueta, the primatologist Anindya Sinha, and the anthropologist Nicolas Lainé, is a transdisciplinary investigation of ‘culture’ as interspecies systems of meaning-making developed over historical time.

Teaching and Supervision:

I teach environmental history and the history of Brazil/Latin America. My undergraduate modules range include a freshman introduction to environmental histories, and sophister modules on the global tropics and modern Brazil, in addition to a Trinity Elective exploring identities and ecologies in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the MPhil in Environmental History, of which I have been the director since 2025, I teach a module on animals and animal agency.

As a supervisor, I welcome students working on any aspect of modern environmental and animal history as well as students interested in Brazil and Latin America.

Selected Publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles:

De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Morais, A.L.; Poettering, J.; Barreto, C.; Gil, T. (2025) “Placing the empire: environmental geographies of Portuguese America,” e-Journal of Portuguese History (ahead of print): https://doi.org/10.1163/16456432-bja10025
Vital, A.V.; De Carvalho Cabral, D. (2025) “Maria and the Posthuman in George Stewart’s Storm,” English Studies 106, 698-712.
De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Freitas, F. (2024) “Placing insects in histories of science,” Isis – A Journal of the History of Science Society 115, 136-140: https://doi.org/10.1086/728894
De Carvalho Cabral, D. (2023) “Creatures of the clearings: deforestation, grass-cutting ants, and multispecies landscape change in postcolonial Brazil,” Environment and History 29, 565-589: https://doi.org/10.3197/096734022X16384451127294
De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Vital, A.V. (2023) “Multispecies emergent textualities: writing and reading in ecologies of selves,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 30, 705-727: https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isab024
De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Vital, A.V.; Lopes, G. (2022) “Tales from the dirt: post-anthropocentric perspectives on Brazil’s past,” Journal of Historical Geography 78, 95-104: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2022.07.001
De Carvalho Cabral, D. (2021) “Horizontality, negotiation, and emergence: toward a philosophy of environmental history,” Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana y Caribeña 11, 235-258: https://doi.org/10.32991/2237-2717.2021v11i3.p255-258
De Carvalho Cabral, D. (2021) “Meaningful clearings: human-ant negotiated landscapes in nineteenth-century Brazil,” Environmental History 26, 55-78: https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emaa058
Melo Júnior, J.C.F.; Areas, P.O.; De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Kruel, V.F.; Rudolpho, L.S.; Quandt, F.L. (2021) “Traditional knowledge of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: environmental history, current status, and policy challenges,” Revista Confluências Culturais 10, 129-143: http://periodicos.univille.br/index.php/RCC/article/view/1554
Tolia-Kelly, D.; De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Legg, S.; Lane, M.; Thomas, N. (2020) “Historical geographies of the 21st century: Challenging our praxis,” Journal of Historical Geography 69, 1-4: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2020.08.002

Books:

De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Vital, A.V.; Gascón, M., Eds. (2024) More-Than-Human Histories of Latin America and the Caribbean: Decentring the Human in Environmental History. London, University of London Press: https://uolpress.co.uk/book/more-than-human-histories-of-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/
De Carvalho Cabral, D. & Bustamante, A.G., Eds. (2016) Metamorfoses Florestais: Culturas, Ecologias e as Transformações Históricas da Mata Atlântica. [Forest Metamorphoses: Cultures, Ecologies, and the Historical Transformations of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest] Curitiba, Prismas.
De Carvalho Cabral, D. (2014) Na Presença da Floresta: Mata Atlântica e História Colonial. [In the Presence of the Forest: Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and Colonial History] Rio de Janeiro, Garamond.

Book Chapters

De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Lähdesmäki, H. (2023) “Multispecies cultures and environmental change: The animal (agency) turn,” in E. O’Gorman, M. Carey, S. Swart, and W. San Martín (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Environmental History. London and New York, Routledge, 91-105.
Guarez, F.C.; De Carvalho Cabral, D. (2023) “Infusing the globe: Yerba mate, Polish immigration, and creolization in southern Brazil (c.1870-1920),” in Thomas Walker, Jane McGaughey, Gabrielle Machnik-Kekesi, and Victoria Kelly (Eds), Migration in the Face of Emerging Risks: Historical Case Studies, New Paradigms, and Future Directions. Cham, Palgrave-Macmillan, 11-27.
De Carvalho Cabral, D.; Sedrez, L. (2023) “An environmental history of the ‘second conquest’: agricultural export boom and landscape-making in Latin America, ca.1850-1930,” in S. Engel-Di Mauro, B. Bustos, D. Ojeda, F. Milanez, and G. García (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Latin America and the Environment. London and New York, Routledge, 51-62.