John R. McNeill is a University Professor at Georgetown University, with appointments in the School of Foreign Service and the Department of History. He previously held the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environmental History and International Affairs at Georgetown and has served as president of the American Society for Environmental History. His influential works include Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2001) and Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (2010). In this lecture, Prof McNeill will analyse how environmental and ecological factors have shaped the historical development of North America as a region, focusing on the impact of the two major biological “invasions” that the continent has experienced over the past 15,000 years.
This event has been made possible by the generous support of Oxford University’s Astor Travel Fund.