Research interests
I am a political geographer with interests in the ongoing influence of space on the relationships between states and societies. My recent scholarship is located at the intersection of power, borders, and digital technology. More specifically, my research focuses on understanding how new developments in information technology generate essential transformations in the nature of borders and territory, and how these changes affect citizenship rights, identity, and the ways in which people relate to space. I study the circumstances in which biometric and wireless technologies are routinely embedded into bodies, travel documents, phones, drones, and other products in order to enable the circulation of flows and to achieve control of mobility at the smallest possible scale. I am interested in theorizing the emerging modes of territorial organization, and how they are impacting human wellbeing and democratic practices.
Recent courses
- International Public Affairs: Governance and Global Space (Graduate)
- Global Cities and Networks (Senior seminar)
- Political Geography
- Economic Geography
- World Regional Geography
- Human Geography
Selected publications
Books
Bordering and Ordering the Twenty-First Century: Understanding Borders. Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MD. 2011.
Selected Articles & Book Chapters
2017 | “Making Space for Digital Technologies: the digital, the limit, and the Sovereign”. In Interventions on the State of Sovereignty at the Border, Jones, R.; Johnson, C.; Brown, W.; Popescu, G.; Pallister-Wilkins, P.; Mountz, A.; Gilbert, E. Political Geography 59: 1-10. |
2017 | “Biometric Technologies and the Automation of Identity and Space”. In B. Warf (ed). Handbook on Geographies of Technology. pp. 458-471. Edward Elgar. |
2015 | “Topological imagination, digital determinism and the mobile border paradigm”. Nordia 44(4): 49-55. |
2015 | “Controlling Mobility: Embodying Borders”. In A-L. Amilhat-Szary and F. Giraut (eds.), Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders. pp. 100-115. Palgrave. |
2014 | “The antiAtlas of Borders, A Manifesto”. Journal of Borderlands Studies. 29(4): 503-512. |
2008 | “Conflicting Logics of Cross-Border Reterritorialization: Geopolitics of Euroregions in Eastern Europe”. Political Geography. 27(4): 418-438. |
2005 | “Diaspora Geopolitics: Romanian Americans and NATO Expansion”. Geopolitics. 10(3): 455- 481. |
Selected Honors, Grants and Awards
2016 | Indiana University South Bend Faculty Research Grant, Office of Research. |
2016 | Visiting Professor, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. |
2015 | External Adviser, Euroborderscapes Project, European Union 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. |
2014 | Visiting Professor, Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble, France. |
2014 | Visiting Professor, University of Toulon, Toulon, France. |
2013-2014 | Resident, Advanced Institute of Mediterranean Studies (IMeRA). Marseille, France. |
2013 | Past Presidents’ Gold Book Award from the Association for Borderlands Studies for my book Bordering and Ordering the Twenty-First Century: Understanding Borders. Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MD. 2011. |
2012-2014 | Senior Research Fellow, CEPS/INSTEAD (Centre d'Etudes de Populations et de Politiques Socio-economiques/ International Networks for Studies in Technology, Environment, Alternatives, Development), Luxembourg. |