Benoit Abraão Mes is an MPhil Student in History at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He is broadly interested in histories of anti-racist resistance, racialisation, and mixed-race identity from across the Americas, including transnational, especially transatlantic, connections. Benoit’s current research centres on the experiences of interracial couples and mixed-race children in the mid-twentieth century United States. In particular, he is interested in how interracial couples and their families navigated and resisted anti-miscegenation laws. He also aims to investigate, primarily through oral testimony, formations of and engagement with a distinct mixed or multi-racial identity among the children born to interracial couples in the generation after Loving v. Virginia (1967).
Before the MPhil, Benoit completed a BA in History at Pembroke. His undergraduate thesis focused on interracial marriage in the US during the 1940s, specifically considering how resistance to anti-miscegenation policies during this period not only prefigured Loving but also marked the decade, in and of itself, as a major moment of protest on the issue. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History supported this work through a research fellowship and grant.
Â
