Kevin Terraciano is the Robert N. Burr Endowed History Department Chair and Professor of History in the UCLA Department of History. He earned his Ph.D. in History from UCLA in 1994, M.A. in 1989, and B.A. with Highest Honors in 1985. Terraciano joined UCLA as Assistant Professor of History in 1995, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2001, and to Professor in 2006. He has served as Director of the UCLA Latin American Institute, Co-Chair of the Latin American Studies MA Program, and founder of the Nahuatl language instruction program sponsored by the Latin American Institute since 2015. As Department Chair, he oversees the History Department, and he has mentored 20 Ph.D. students in Latin American history to completion while serving on 88 additional dissertation committees across disciplines including Anthropology, Art History, Linguistics, and Sociology.

Terraciano specializes in Latin American history, focusing on colonial Mexico and Indigenous cultures and languages of central and southern Mexico, including Nahuatl, Mixtec, and Zapotec, through ethnohistory and Mesoamerican studies. His major publications include The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca: Ñudzahui History, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford University Press, 2001, translated as Los mixtecos de la Oaxaca colonial, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2013); Codex Sierra: A Nahuatl-Mixtec Book of Accounts from Colonial Mexico (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021); Mesoamerican Voices: Native-Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Guatemala (Cambridge University Press, 2005, co-edited with Lisa Sousa and Matthew Restall); and The Florentine Codex: An Encyclopedia of the Nahua World in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2019, co-edited with Jeanette Peterson). He has contributed chapters to volumes such as Canons and Values: Ancient to Modern (Getty Publications, 2019, co-edited with Larry Silver). Terraciano's work has earned the J. Franklin Jameson Award (American Historical Association, 2023), Latin American Studies Association Prize (2021), Cline Prize (2004), multiple Heizer Prizes (1999, 2004), and UCLA teaching and mentoring awards including five Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Awards (2006-2010) and the Faculty Gold Shield Prize (2012). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Getty Research Institute, and co-leads the Digital Florentine Codex project.

Professional Email: terra@history.ucla.edu