Dr. Marcella Schute (1996) is a historian specializing in American history, the history of Atlantic slavery, and political history. Marcella obtained her PhD entitled Securing the Future of Black Labor: Covert Attempts to Reopen the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Louisiana, 1853-1861 from Leiden University in 2025. Her dissertation, supervised by Prof. Dr. Damian Pargas, explored the covert attempts by the state of Louisiana to reopen the transatlantic slave trade from West Africa in the 1850s. Specifically, it investigates what the motivations and strategies of the Louisiana elite were to reopen this trade. As part of her PhD trajectory, Marcella contributed to the volume Legacies of Slavery & Contemporary Resistance (2023) with a short piece about her research. She also has two forthcoming articles in the peer-reviewed journals Louisiana History and Slavery & Abolition.  

Marcella was a PhD candidate at the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies between 2021 and 2024. At the institute, she co-organized various conferences and seminars. She joined the Netherlands American Studies Association in 2024 as a PhD board member, and has since 2025 become a general board member. 

Marcella received her BA cum laude in Liberal Arts & Sciences from University College Roosevelt in 2019. She completed her MA in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam in 2020. A revised version of her MA thesis has been published in the peer-reviewed journal LUCAS Graduate Journal (2023).