Rashid Dossett
Anthropologist, Sociologist and academic researcher
I’m Rashid Dossett — an anthropologist, sociologist and novelist from Curaçao. I explore history, culture and social change through research, writing and storytelling that connects academic insight with engaging narrative.
I am particularly interested in how empires, belief systems and social structures shape everyday life long after the headlines — or the conquests — have faded. This curiosity has taken me from European lecture halls to Latin American field sites, and from academic research to the quieter, more imaginative spaces of historical fiction.
I studied at Leiden University and Erasmus University Rotterdam, where I focused on anthropology, sociology and Latin American studies. During this time, I developed a strong interest in colonial legacies, cultural memory and the ways societies narrate themselves. Field research in Guatemala deepened my understanding of how historical power dynamics continue to influence identity, governance and community life in the present day. I approach research with a healthy respect for complexity, ambiguity and the fact that human behaviour rarely fits neatly into theoretical boxes.
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Alongside academic and consultancy work, I write novels that allow me to explore similar themes through narrative rather than analysis. My fiction often draws on historical settings, particularly those shaped by the Spanish Empire, using character-driven stories to examine belief, resistance, spirituality and social change. Writing fiction gives me the freedom to ask questions that footnotes sometimes can’t — and to do so with a sense of play, irony and emotional texture.
Whether I’m writing academically, creatively or informally online, my aim is the same: to make complex ideas accessible without flattening them. My work is ultimately about connection — between past and present, scholarship and storytelling, and ideas and lived experience.
