Tomás Mantilla

Born and raised in Bogotá, Tomás joined the Department of History at Harvard University as a doctoral student in 2024. Tomás specializes in Latin American contemporary history with a focus on Colombia. His research interests comprise popular politics, everyday processes of knowledge transmission, intimacy, and race. Prior to Harvard, Tomás’ master's thesis drew on early 20th-century Colombian peasant’s and worker’s romantic correspondence to analyze how the rise of vernacular literacy reshaped established ideas around class and gender, ultimately eroding the nation’s catholic modernity project.

He is co-author of La Época: Reportajes de una historia vetada (The Epoch: Dispatches from a Forbidden War), winner of the 2022 Simón Bolivar Award. A public history work, La Época, merges photography and reportage to document the War of Villarrica (1954-1957), a pivotal yet unappreciated precursor of the conflict between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgency and the Colombian state.

Tomás holds a BA in History from Universidad de los Andes, and an MA in History from University College London (UCL).