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Matthew Restall is one of the world's leading historians of Colonial Latin America. He is an ethnohistorian and a scholar of conquest, colonization, and the African diaspora in the Americas. He is currently Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History and Anthropology, and Director of Latin American Studies, at the Pennsylvania State University. He is co-editor of Ethnohistory journal, and editor of the book series Latin American Originals.
Restall was born in a suburb of London, England, in 1964. He grew up in Spain, Venezuela, and East Asia, but was schooled in England, primarily at Wellington College, before going on to receive a BA degree with first-class honours in Modern History from Oxford University in 1986. He earned a PhD in Latin American History from UCLA in 1992, studying under James Lockhart, and has since held teaching positions at various universities in the United States. A prolific scholar, Restall's twenty books and fifty articles and essays published since 1995 have earned him an international reputation as a leader in his field. His books include The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850, Maya Conquistador, Invading Guatemala, 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse, Latin America in Colonial Times, and The Conquistadors. His book The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan won the Conference on Latin American History’s 2009 prize for best book on Mexican history. His most widely read book is Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, also published in Spanish and in Portuguese.
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