Dana Leibsohn’s current research taps the insights of anthropology and art history, focusing on both indigenous visual culture in colonial Latin America and trans-Pacific trade in the early modern period. She has published on indigenous maps and manuscripts, hybridity in colonial visual culture, the trade between China and Mexico, and the early modern history of Manila.

Leibsohn teaches courses on Latin American visual culture and histories of colonialism and early modern exchange. She also has a strong interest in digital technologies and team-teaches the interdisciplinary classes Digital Effects and Making Knowledge. In many of her courses students produce scholarship accessible to the public, including projects on contemporary artists, objects in local museums and historic maps.

Her online collaborative publications include Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820 and History from Things: Indigenous Objects and Colonial Latin America. Leibsohn is also a member of Smith's Latin American and Latino/a Studies Program and was recently appointed General Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Colonial Latin American Review.