David Biggs was born in Florida and raised on the Cape Fear coast, and he received his BA in History from the University of North Carolina in 1992. He worked from 1993-96 as a volunteer teacher in Vietnam for Volunteers in Asia, a Stanford University-based non-profit that sends college graduates to teach in Asian colleges. This experience led to graduate research in Asian Studies. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Washington in 2004. As a graduate student, he received a Foreign Language Area Studies grant, a Fulbright Hayes Dissertation Fellowship, a Blakemore Fellowship, and several other awards. His past research examines the social and environmental histories of modern infrastructure projects, especially water control and irrigation projects. Much of his research is located at sites in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, but also is connected to topics in the US and elsewhere. His first book, Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta (University of Washington, 2011), examines the intersections of politics and nature along the waterways of the Mekong Delta from the days of the French colonial conquest in the 1860s to the battles of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and after. Both an environmental and a political history, he argues for a deeper historical and ecological approach to understanding why many nation-building schemes fall short of their intended social or political goals. David’s work has appeared in edited volumes and such journals as Environmental History, Technology & Culture, Comparative Technology Transfer & Society, Modern Asian Studies and Bioscience. His work has been featured in area newspapers, and he regularly contributes to public radio and other venues on issues related to Vietnam, war pollution and water politics.