Ramos, Lucas

Lucas René Ramos is a social historian of sexuality, gender, and race in modern Europe, finishing his Ph.D. in History. He specializes in LGBTQIA+ and feminist studies, social movements, eugenics, and religion, with a research focus on Italy and the Mediterranean. He has taught courses on early modern and modern European history, as well as transnational Italian studies.

His dissertation, “Queer, Catholic, Communist: Forging a Sexual Revolution in the Italian Republic, 1958-1989,” examines how Catholic eugenicist programs, social services, and hygiene centers rapidly developed in the years after Italian Fascism, impacting the everyday lives and political aims of trans and homosexual people. “Queer, Catholic, Communist” argues that interconfessional conflicts have structured the coalition-building strategies of sexual liberationists, as they responded to the Vatican, the Christian Democracy, and the migration of Arab Muslim communities into the 1980s.  

Lucas’ dissertation was awarded the 2025 Jesse Howard Jr. Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies, for which he served as a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. His research has been further supported by the Ford Foundation through the National Academies of Sciences, as well as the Mellon Foundation through the Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies, amongst other sources. 

Lucas has published with EuropeNow and Domani, featured in il Manifesto and Forbes, and translated for Verso’s Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Paintings (2023). 

Before his graduate studies, Lucas received his B.A. in History from Princeton University in 2019, where he was also a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. He has served as co-president of the Graduate History Association, a policy fellow for the National LGBTQ+ Taskforce in Washington D.C., and graduate intern for the Sexual Violence Response Center located at Columbia University. He welcomes prospective students to reach out to him to learn more about the department. 

Experience

Recently invited presentations and interviews:

“Lo sguardo dalla frontiera meridionale: anti-gender, anti-surrogata e gli intrecci religiosi della liberazione queer oggi,” Il Giubileo Queer, 25 anni di resistenza, American Academy in Rome and the Circolo di Cultura Omosessuale “Mario Mieli.” June 2025. (Introductory remarks with Mario Colamarino, President of the Circolo di Cultura Omosessuale “Mario Mieli”) 

“Fellows in Focus: Lucas René Ramos.” American Academy in Rome, June 2025.

“Social Care as Social Control: Homosexuality and Psychiatry in Cold War Palermo” for the trustees of the American Academy in Rome, Open Stacks. June 2025.

“‘Il giovane tunisino’: Race, Exploitation, and the Making of Gay Respectability in Italy’s Homosexual Liberation Front, 1979-1982,” Legal and Theoretical Perspectives, Queer Kinship across Time and Space, The University of Oxford. Oxford, UK. April 2025.

“Lucas R. Ramos & Selby Wynn Schwartz – Una terra per tutt3: Queer Resistance in the Italian South,” Shoptalk, The American Academy in Rome. Rome, Italy. February 2025.