Gregg Mitman is the Vilas Research and William Coleman Professor of History, Medical History, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and teacher, whose interests span the history of science, medicine, and the environment in the United States and the world and include a commitment to environmental and social justice.
His most recent work explores the history and legacy of the Firestone Plantations Company in Liberia and is the subject of Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia. Praised by Kirkus as “a well-rendered and -documented tale of exploitation in the developing world,” it was published by The New Press.
Mitman’s current research, for which he has received a €2.5 million European Research Council Advanced Grant, aims to discern the ecological, economic, political, and social forces at play that have simultaneously turned certain regions of West Africa into profitable sites of natural resource extraction, productive enclaves of biomedical research, and hot zones of pandemic threats.
Mitman is the founding director of the Nelson Institute’s Center for Culture, History and Environment. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York, among others.