Gregg Mitman

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Gregg is a historian of science, medicine, and the environment, who holds appointments at both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at LMU in Munich. Over the past decade, Gregg has dedicated himself to pursuing research and building partnerships in Liberia to uncover the history of the world’s largest contiguous rubber plantation, built by Firestone Tire & Rubber Company in 1926, and its impact and legacy on lives and livelihoods in Liberia. He coproduced and codirected with Sarita Siegel two films, In the Shadow of Ebola, an intimate portrait of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, and The Land Beneath Our Feet, a documentary on history, memory, and land rights in Liberia. Gregg’s most recent book, Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia (The New Press, 2021) led him to an interest in how resource extraction by foreign firms in West Africa helped to turn fragments of the Upper Guinean Forest into “hotspots” of both biodiversity conservation and emerging infectious disease threats.