Jonathan Curry-Machado

Jonathan Curry-Machado is founding editor and coordinator, and audio-visual director, of the Commodities of Empire project; founder member of the Commodity Frontiers Initiative; and Associate Fellow at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) (School of Advanced Study, University of London), and the Institute of the Americas (University College London). His research ranges from the history, identity and influence of migrant engineers in nineteenth century Cuba, in the context of transnational networks of trade, capital and technology; through comparative study of Cuba and Java, and the global transfer of cane varieties; to rural society on the sugar frontier in the Hispanic Caribbean. His publications include the book Cuban Sugar Industry: Transnational Networks and Engineering Migrants in Mid-Nineteenth Century Cuba (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), and he edited Global Histories, Imperial Connections, Local Interactions (Palgrave Macmillan 2013). He has also published articles relating to the 1844 La Escalera conspiracy in Cuba, and he has undertaken contemporary research into socio-political and socio-cultural reasons for Cuba’s continued stability in the face of crisis. He is currently co-editing the Oxford University Press Handbook of Commodity History (with Prof. Jean Stubbs, ILAS; Prof. William Gervase Clarence-Smith, SOAS; and Dr Jelmer Vos, University of Glasgow). His work explores the transnational and transimperial nature of commodity production and trade, and their associated migrations. He has been involved in the application of new digital technologies, include GIS, to the research of commodities and their frontiers of geographical expansion.

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