François-Michel Le Tourneau holds a phd in geography (1999) and is a senior research fellow at CNRS. He worked in several research labs located in French Universities (Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) or abroad (University of Brasilia in Brazil, The University of Arizona, USA). His research interests are about sparsely populated areas in general and the Amazon in particular. He is the author of a number of scientific papers in top journals in the geographical fields and of books for which he won several French awards (two times bronze medal of the French geographical society, Sophie Barluet Prize).