Biography

Viola Müller is a social historian specialized in nineteenth-century slavery and coerced labor in the Americas. She obtained her PhD in January 2020 from Leiden University with a dissertation entitled “Cities of Refuge: Slave Flight and Illegal Freedom in the American Urban South, 1800-1860.”

Viola holds a BA in Latin American Studies and Economics from the University of Cologne (2012) and an MA in History of Migration and Global Interdependence from Leiden University (cum laude, 2015). She also studied at University of Barcelona (2009-2010) and was a short-term fellow at Brown University (2019).

During her time as a Max Weber Fellow, Viola is further pursuing her research interests in the fields of slavery, labor, race, and resistance in the Americas, this time approaching urban workers through a transnational comparative perspective.

She has gained teaching experience in Colombia, Germany, and the Netherlands.