Welcome!

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Florida (UF) and the coordinator of the UF African Networks Lab. I am also an Affiliate Faculty at the Center for African Studies, the Center for Global Islamic Studies, the UF Food Systems Institute, and the Sahel Research Group.

My current research focuses on cross-border trade and transnational political violence in West Africa. Using social network analysis, I study how borders affect the social networks and spatial patterns of West African traders and violent extremist organizations.

Before coming to Florida, I held faculty appointments at the University of Southern Denmark and Rutgers University and worked as a researcher at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research. I received a joint Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and the University of Rouen in France (2006).

Crossing borders is something that I have done a lot over the years. Born in Switzerland, I spent part of my youth in West Africa, did fieldwork in Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Ghana, Benin, and Mauritania, and worked as a professor and international consultant in Europe and the United States.

A geographer by training, I also enjoy crossing disciplinary boundaries. Over the last years, I have worked with historians, economists, and political scientists. My research has been funded by NASA, the NSF, and the United Nations. I am currently the coordinator of the OECD West Africa research program at the University of Florida.

I am an Associate Editor of Political Geography starting this late fall, an Editor of the Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies, and a “chief” of the African Borderlands Research Network (ABORNE). I was the Africa Editor of the Journal of Borderlands Studies and on the editorial board of Connections, the journal of the International Network for Social Network Analysis, from 2015-2022.

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Click here for a pdf version of my CV.