[b]Leslie Bethell[/b] is Emeritus Professor of Latin American History and Honorary Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London; Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford; Senior Research Associate, Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brasil, Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro; and Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. He is a former Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London (1987-1992), and founding Director of the Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford (1997-2007). He has been Visiting Professor at a number of Brazilian and US universities and research institutions, including the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (1979), the University of California, San Diego (1986), the University of Chicago (1992-1993), and the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington D.C: Fellow (1987), Guest Scholar (1996-1997), Public Policy Scholar (2008-2011). Professor Bethell's research has been principally in the field of nineteenth and twentieth-century Latin American – and especially Brazilian – political, social and cultural history. He is Editor of the Cambridge History of Latin America (12 volumes, Cambridge University Press, 1984-2008), which is also being published in Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese, and the author or co-author of chapters on the Independence of Brazil and Brazil 1822-1850 in CHLA vol. III Latin America, from Independence to c. 1870 and four chapters on the politics of Brazil 1930-2002 in CHLA vol. IX Brazil since 1930 (2008). Professor Bethell serves on the International Advisory Councils of a number of Brazilian institutions and on the Editorial Boards of several Brazilian journals. Professor Bethell has been awarded the Ordem Nacional do Cruzeiro do Sul by the Brazilian government (Comendador in 1994, Grande Oficial in 1998). In 2004 he was elected a member of the Academia Brasileira de Ciências. In 2010 he was elected a sócio correspondente (one of twenty foreign associate members) of the Academia Brasileira de Letras. He also in 2010 received the Ordem Nacional do Merito Cientifico (Comendador). He currently lives in Rio de Janeiro.