Lucas R. Rodriguez

Ph.D. Student

Advisor: Joshua Piker
Current Research: Early Indigenous history, race and race-making, early American Northeast
Email: [[lrrodriguez]]

Bio

Lucas is currently a second-year Ph.D. student in William & Mary's Department of History. His research interests center on race and race-making, exploring the emergence of racial ideologies in the early American Northeast, with a particular focus on race-making as a dialogic process in which Indigenous peoples were actors.

Lucas earned his B.A. in History and Political Science from the George Washington University in 2024, graduating with History departmental honors after completing a thesis project that explored Euro-American scalp bounties in the French and Indian Wars as a means of race-making in New England. In 2025, he completed his M.A. at William & Mary after successfully defending his research portfolio, which comprised essays exploring the creation of a race-based judicial system in colonial Pennsylvania and arguing that North American captivity narratives functioned as a means of knowledge creation and dissemination.