Alexandre Belmonte

I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, in a family of Italian origin shaped above all by Calabrian memory, Mediterranean traditions, food, music, and dialects. Growing up in an Atlantic port city marked by intense cultural diversity fostered, from an early age, my interest in displacement, belonging, cultural frontiers, and the many ways in which memory is constructed and preserved.

My intellectual journey has been shaped across very different landscapes: Rio de Janeiro, Calabria, the Andes, Argentina, Bolivia, France, and, more recently, Greece. In each of these places, I encountered questions that continue to guide my work as a historian: the relationship between territory and identity, the persistence of subaltern memories, the enduring power of defeated rebellions, and the ways individuals and communities preserve dignity in the face of violence, loss, and uprootedness.

I am Associate Professor of History at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), where I completed my undergraduate, master's, and doctoral studies. My research focuses on the intersections of power, culture, memory, and resistance, with particular attention to the colonial Andes, Indigenous rebellions, material culture, legal cultures, and the historical experiences of subaltern groups in imperial, colonial, and postcolonial contexts.

In recent years, Greece has come to occupy an increasingly important place in my work. This connection emerges both from my Mediterranean and Calabrian background and from my engagement with the poetry of Giorgos Seferis, the memory of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, and modern Greek history, marked by exile, displacement, imperial trauma, and enduring forms of belonging.

Today, my research seeks to bring Latin America, the Mediterranean, and the Greek world into dialogue—not through simple analogy, but through a shared attention to common historical experiences: imperial margins, difficult mountain frontiers, defeated rebellions, silenced memories, and landscapes that continue to bear the deep marks of history.