Sarah Easterby-Smith is Lecturer in Modern History and Director of the Centre for French History and Culture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Warwick and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, the European University Institute, Florence and the Henry E. Huntington Library, California. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Social History Society and is also a member of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the British Society for the History of Science and the Society for the Study of French History.