Jean-François Mouhot completed his PhD at the European University Institute, Florence (2006). He had previously studied in France, the UK, Canada and had taught at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and at the University of Lille, France. He worked for the department of History at Birmingham University (UK) between 2006 and 2011, with a short interruption in 2007/2008 to work for a London-based environmental NGO. Jean-François will be in Georgetown until June 2013 to work (under the guidance of Prof. John McNeill) on a new EU-funded (Marie Curie) research project on the Environmental History of Saint-Domingue/Haiti (1492-today). He will then continue this project at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.