Dr. Erin Stone, department chair and associate professor of Latin American history and director of Early American Studies Master鈥檚 Program, teaches Latin American and Indigenous history.

A summer trip to Lima and Cuzco, Peru, gave Stone the window of opportunity to explore indigenous architecture and artifacts, but most importantly, the experience inspired her to pursue graduate studies in Latin American history.

Her article, 鈥淢ission Impossible: Slave Raiders vs. Friars in Tierra Firme 1513-1522,鈥� which focuses on the impact of the growing Indigenous slave trade on the first religious missions along the coast of northern South America, will soon be published in The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History. She has also contributed scholarly essays to Ethnohistory and the Encyclopedia of Latin America.

In addition to her academic writing, she has given presentations at national and international conferences, including 鈥淎n Indigenous Diaspora?: Exploring the Viability of a Sixteenth Century Circum-Caribbean Indigenous Diaspora鈥� for the Conference of Ethnohistory in Las Vegas, 鈥淕ranjerias de Indios: The Climax of the Indigenous Slave trade in the Americas鈥� for the Latin American Studies Association in Washington, D.C., and 鈥淭he Search for Indigenous Slaves in the Circum-Caribbean: The Key to New World Exploration and Conquest鈥� at the Association of Caribbean Historians in San Ignacio, Belize.

In 2014, she was selected as the Huntington-Clark Summer Institute Seminar Fellow in Early American Studies. The highly competitive fellowship, which focused on 鈥淭he Global Early Modern Caribbean,鈥� allows participants to engage with other scholars and conduct their own research using Huntington Library鈥檚 collections. In 2011, she was also awarded the Institute of International Education, formerly the Fulbright Hayes Graduate Fellowship, for International Study in Spain and the Dominican Republic. 

Stone received bachelor鈥檚 degrees in International Studies and Spanish from the University of Miami, a master鈥檚 degree in history from the University of North Florida and a doctorate in history, with a focus on Atlantic World history, from Vanderbilt University.