Claire Antone Payton Ph.D. is a project manager at the Karsh Institute of Democracy where she manages the Memory Project, the Democratic Futures Project, and the Good Life Political Project. 

She is also a scholar specializing in memory, urban studies, and the politics of authoritarianism in the Caribbean. In 2010, she created the Haiti Memory Project, an oral history initiative that documented first person testimonies of the deadly Port-au-Prince earthquake and life in its aftermath. Her scholarship has appeared in Oral History Review, the Journal of Urban History, NACLA Report on the Americas, and several edited volumes. She has taught courses at Duke and UVA on the history and memory in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Claire holds a B.A. in History from Reed College, a M.A. in History and French Studies from NYU, and an Ph.D. in History from Duke University.