Natalia Sobrevilla Perea is a researcher at the Instituto Riva Agüero, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She is a historian of nineteenth-century Latin America whose research examines how wars of independence, military institutions, constitutional politics, and political culture shaped the formation of early republican states and national identities in the Andean region.
Her Kellogg research project, titled “Fashioning Democratic Institutions from Conflict: How Mid-nineteenth Century Latin American Constitutions were Forged in Civil Wars,” examines how civil wars across Latin America reshaped political life and led to new constitutional frameworks. By comparing conflicts in countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Peru, it explores how cycles of upheaval and reaction influenced the development of early republican institutions.
Supported by grants from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Humboldt Foundation, Sobrevilla Perea has published extensively on independence, authoring or editing 12 books, including Armed Citizens and Citizens in Arms: The Military and the Creation of the State in Nineteenth-Century Peru (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Her research also appears in leading journals like the Latin American Research Review, European Historical Quarterly, Revista de Indias, and Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas. Additionally, she has led international research networks and directed British Library-funded projects to preserve and digitalize nineteenth-century Peruvian newspapers.
Previously a professor at the University of Kent for 17 years, she has held visiting fellowships at Yale and the John Carter Brown Library. She holds a PhD and MA from the University of London and a Master’s degree from the University of Vienna.