Robin Derby
Associate Professor
Department of History, International Institute
Robin (Lauren) Derby is Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Director of the Caribbean Program in the International Institute.
Her research has treated everyday life under regimes of state terror, 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 Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo, which won the Bolton-Johnson Prize, co-won the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award, and received honorable mention for the Bryce Wood Book Award (Spanish edition 2016); (co-editor) Activating the Past: History and Memory in the Black Atlantic World; (co-editor) The Dominican Republic Reader; and articles on Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Her current book project, which considers werewolves in light of the “animal turn” is based on oral testimony of demonic animal apparitions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and is entitled Fera Bestia: Sorcery as History in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands.