Jeffrey Jones is a doctoral candidate specializing in Modern Britain and its empire. His work focuses on British "formal" and "informal" imperial ventures in Latin America, especially the colony of British Honduras/Belize. His dissertation, tentatively entitled “‘Ancient Obligations’: The British Empire in the Caribbean Basin, 1763–1862,” examines how British colonial officials and the metropolitan public were captivated with borderlands of the Caribbean Basin which were contested between both European and American empires as well as indigenous and Afro-indigenous polities. Chronically understudied and unappreciated within British imperial history, British Honduras functioned as a crucial imperial borderland for the British in Central America and occupied an outsized fascination among the emerging British middle classes as a promising area for dreams of secure investments, fantastic returns, and a hideaway for scofflaws and vagabonds.