Héctor Linares, PhD

Education

• Ph.D. Early Modern Global History, The Pennsylvania State University
• M.Ed. Teacher Training and Education, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)
• M.A. Early Modern History, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)
• B.A. History, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)

Research/ Fields of Interest

• Iberian History
• Early Modern History
• Sociocultural and Legal History
• Race
• Indigenous Studies
• Empires
• Chivalry

Biography

Héctor Linares is an assistant professor of Iberian history at Suffolk University in Boston. He received his Ph.D. in Early Modern Global History from The Pennsylvania State University. He is a sociocultural and legal historian of the early modern Iberian world and is interested in the intersection of law, religion, imperial building, and race during the 16th and 17th centuries. His research explores the role of indigenous, Asian, and African descendants in Iberian aristocratic institutions. His book Global Knighthood: African, Indigenous, and Asian Knights in the Noble Military Orders of the Iberian World examines how vassals of color of the Spanish king engaged with Castilian legal and institutional culture to obtain prestigious government offices, noble status, and honors and estates from the Spanish monarch. He analyzes these cases across the vast geography of the Iberian empires, from Portugal to the Philippines with an interdisciplinary approach employing literature, theater, art, and architecture to address and embrace the silences of the archive.

Héctor is the author of dozens of scholarly publications in English and Spanish. His work has appeared in the Renaissance Quarterly, the Sixteenth Century Journal, The Americas, and Tiempos Modernos (among others). He has also edited five volumes on race, chivalry, nobility, political culture, and legal mobilization in the Spanish Empire. His research has been generously funded by the RSA, the Sixteenth Century Society, the Newberry Library for Renaissance Studies, the Folger Library, the John Carter Brown Library, and the European Union.

Selected Publications

• 2026. Hector Linares, Las Politicas del Honor y la Merced: Encomiendas, Administracion y Privanza en el Consejo de las Ordenes, 1598-1621, (Madrid: Silex, 2026).
• 2025. Hector Linares, "An Inca Girl's Petitions to Revindicate Atahualpa's Lineage: Barbara de Atahualpa's Letters to the Spanish Monarch, 1610-1613," The Sixteenth Century Journal 56, no 3, 617-644.
• 2025. “Honor and Discord in the Council of Military Orders: Prosecutors versus Secretaries and the struggle for institutional preeminence, 1588-1700,” in The Routledge Companion to Military Orders, vol. VIII, eds. Emmanuel Buttigieg and Clara Almagro (New York: Routledge), 76-91.
• 2025. “Visualizing Black Knighthood in Early Modern Iberia: The Black Knight of the Order of Santiago in Chafariz d'el Rei,” in The Routledge Companion to Race and Visual Culture, eds. Nicholas R. Jones, Christina H. Lee, and Dominique Polanco (New York: Routledge), 130-145.
• 2024. “Antón Zape: Un Negro de Mucho Precio: Seeking Honor and Reward through Royal Service in Sixteenth-Century Panama,” The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History 81, no 4, 533-567.
• 2021. “Female Spaces in the Military Orders. Women 's Agency and Encomiendas in Seventeenth Century Spain,” in Ordens Militares, Identidade e Mudança, ed. Isabel C. Fernandes, (Lisbon: Edições Colibri), 1177-1196.
• 2020. “From Servant to Knight: Social Promotion and Clientelism in the Duke of Lerma 's Household, 1598-1618,” in Privilegio y Poder en la Sociedad Moderna. Actores, Medios, Fines y Circunstancias, ss. XVI-XVIII, eds. Sergio Intorre, Héctor Linares, Marina Perruca, and Valeria Patti (Palermo: Palermo University Press), 169-202
• 2021. “Los Caballeros Trece de la Orden de Santiago: Naturaleza, Elección y Ceremonia de una Dignidad Militar en la España Barroca,” in La Representación del Poder de las Élites en la Edad Moderna, ss. XVI-XVIII, eds.Héctor Linares and Marina Perruca, (Madrid: Sílex, 2022), 117-160.