Jean Stubbs first went to Cuba in 1968 to conduct research. She married there, had two children, and lived and worked in Havana until 1987. Now based in London, she has published widely on Cuba, with a specialist interest in tobacco, class, race, gender, nation and migration. Her foundational work on Cuban tobacco, and especially the Havana cigar, led her to trace cultivation, trade, manufacture, labour and consumption on a regional and global scale, drawing on sociological, anthropological and agronomic approaches, as well as archival and oral history.Professor Emerita of London Metropolitan University, she is an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (University of London) and the Institute of the Americas (University College London). In 2009, she was awarded the UNESCO Toussaint Louverture Medal, and in 2012 was elected member of the Cuban Academy of History.
