Robin Derby

An expert on Latin American history, Robin Derby is a professor of history, the Dr. E. Bradford Burns Chair in Latin American Studies and co-director of the UC Cuba Academic Initiative. Her research focuses on the modern Caribbean, Latin American political regimes, authoritarianism, state-sponsored terror, U.S. imperialism, folk Catholicism, popular religious beliefs and cultural history. Her work also examines how notions of race, national identity and witchcraft have been articulated in popular media such as rumor, food and animals, and she can comment on the cultural history of the Cuban cigar, vampire rumors and chupacabras.

Her publications include "The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo"; "Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World"; (co-editor) "The Dominican Republic Reader"; and her latest "Bêtes Noires: Sorcery as History in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands."

Derby is part of the UCLA Latin American Institute.