Peter M. Ward earned his Ph.D. in geography from the University of Liverpool in 1976. He held senior teaching positions at the Universities of London and Cambridge before moving in 1991 to The University of Texas at Austin, where he is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He was the Director of the Mexican Center of the Institute of Latin American Studies at UT Austin from 1992 to 1996 and 2000-05. In 2000 he was appointed C.B. Smith Sr. Centennial Chair in US-Mexico Relations. Since 1997 he has coordinated the Mellon Sociology of Latin America Ph.d. Program.