Lauren (Robin) Derby’s research has treated dictatorship and everyday life, the long durée social history of the Haitian and Dominican border, and how notions of race, national identity and witchcraft have been articulated in popular media such as rumor, food and animals. Her publications include the prize-winning The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo, the co-authored Terreur de frontière:  le massacre des Haïtiens en République dominicaine en 1937 (Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2021) and the co-edited Dominican Republic Reader (Duke University Press, 2014). Her latest book is called Bêtes Noires: Sorcery as History in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands (Duke University Press, 2025). She is Bradford Burns Chair of Latin American history at UCLA where she teaches courses on modern Latin America and Caribbean history, cultural history and food studies.