Robin (Lauren) Derby
Lauren Derby is an American historian and professor whose work focuses on Latin American history, particularly the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. She is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and serves as a Senior Editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review.
Education
Derby received her B.A. from Brown University in 1983, graduating with honors in Development Studies. From 1980 to 1981, she studied abroad at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, focusing on African sociology, politics, and rural development. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago in 1997.Career
At UCLA, she is affiliated with the Food Studies minor and the UC-Cuba Academic Initiative. She advises students on topics including U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, race ideologies, authoritarian regimes, and oral history. She is also affiliated with the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.Research
Derby's research engages with themes of translation and cultural interpretation, often exploring how foreign or unfamiliar worldviews are rendered intelligible across cultural boundaries. Influenced by Walter Benjamin’s ideas on translation, her work frequently centers on explaining the logics of marginalized or rural communities to broader audiences.Awards and honors
- "Haitians, Magic and Money: Raza and Society in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands, 1900–1937," published in Comparative Studies in Society and History, received the Conference on Latin American History award from the American Historical Association.The Dictator’s Seduction was awarded the Herbert Eugene Bolton-John J. Johnson Prize – Best Book in English by the Conference on Latin American History in 2010, and co-won the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Award from the Caribbean Studies Association.
- Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for 2010–2011.Terreurs de frontière won the 2023 Latin American Studies Association prize for best translation in the Haiti and Dominican Republic section.
- "Stealing the Citadel" received honorable mention from the Haiti and Dominican Republic section of the Latin American Studies Association in 2025.