Lara Putnam is University Center for International Studies research professor in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh, where she has been Department Chair since 2014. She writes about Latin American and Caribbean history; migration, kinship, and gender; and the impact of digital technology on historical research. Publications include The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870-1960 (2002) and Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age (2013), as well as more than two dozen chapters and articles. Putnam's research on contemporary grassroots political organizing has appeared in Vox.com, New Republic, Washington Post, Washington Monthly, Democracy Journal, and beyond. She is active in grassroots organizing in Southwest Pennsylvania.