As of 2025 Damian Pargas is our new member on the board of the RSPH-OPG. He introduces himself: ‘It is an honor for me to join the board of OPG!’

I am a Professor of North American History at Leiden University and the Director of the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, specialized in the history of slavery and its aftermath in the United States and the rest of the continent. The themes that I find particularly interesting are those related to questions of inclusion and exclusion, freedom, citizenship, and the role that race has played in the development of democracy.

I have written extensively on topics such as forced migration, fugitivity, and the development of various ‘asylum regimes’ for refugees from slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries, for example. At present I am working on two book projects (a monograph and an edited volume) that explore the role of Black freedom on the development of what I call ‘civic, racial, and hybrid democracies’ in various parts of North America during the first half of the nineteenth century.’