Gerry Kearns has a PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge UK. He has held appointments at Liverpool UK, Wisconsin-Madison USA, Cambridge UK, Virginia Tech USA, and National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland, where he is Professor of Human Geography. For February-June 2014 he is Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He is the author of Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder (Oxford University Press, 2009) and is working on Vital Geographies: The Cultural Politics of AIDS.