Kristen Schultz began studying the history of Iberia and Latin America as an undergraduate exchange student at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. She received her M.A. in History and her Ph.D. in History both from New York University. Her book Tropical Versailles (2001) examined the ways in which the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal transformed understandings of monarchy and empire in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her latest book is From Conquest to Colony: Empire, Wealth and Difference in 18th-Century Brazil (Yale University Press, 2023). Her current research examines governance in the eighteenth-century Portuguese Empire in America. At Seton Hall, along with Western Civilization and Latin American History I and II, she teaches courses on the political and cultural history of Latin America and Iberia.