Allen F. Roberts is distinguished professor emeritus at World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. Trained as a socio-cultural anthropologist, he specializes in francophone African arts and humanities. Over the course of his career, he has undertaken diverse research, writing, teaching, and exhibition projects with his late spouse Mary “Polly” Nooter Roberts (d.1918), an Africanist art historian, UCLA professor, and museum professional who served as deputy director of the Fowler Museum and consulting curator of African arts at LACMA. Their prize-winning traveling exhibitions and accompanying books included A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (2003) and Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History (1996). Roberts has served as principal editor and author of the Fowler’s exhibition book Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths (2019), and has co-edited and written two chapters for Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint: Shirdi Sai Baba’s Presence (2022), dedicated to Polly’s memory. His current projects include new research and writing about Sufi arts of Senegal and a major initiative concerning Christian arts of southeastern D. R. Congo.