Avuncular American

NATO deals with sustained turmoil

Wall art near Brussels' EU institutions

"Sustained turmoil" might be a metaphor for the presidential whirlwind that just blew through Europe, but the phrase is actually a heading in the German Marshall Fund's (GMFUS) survey of the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue.  Last Friday, when the wheels of Air Force One were just up from Brussels, GMF hosted a round table to launch their in depth study of this NATO initiative which began in 1994.  Though some of the participants, during the coffee before the proceedings got under way, marveled at sighting "The Beast" or FLOTUS in person, it must be said that the name of DJT himself was never mentioned.

Shows you that not everything revolves around the Man Baby, and that serious NATO business goes on, despite his tantrums.

Well attended by a roster of diplomats, journalists, and civil society people from a number of Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia are the seven non-NATO member partner countries), as well as NATO International Staff from the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division, the round table showed how NATO goes beyond traditional East-West concerns (NATO's "comfort area," as one of the participants called it) and engages with countries whose stability matters to NATO member states.

"Beyond crisis management, NATO and partners must address protracted instability," summarized one of the participants.  Several lamented NATO's role in Libya, which was seen as unfinished business, contrary to the extensive stabilization work done over years in Bosnia.

The Med Dialogue is relatively unknown outside specialist circles, and is seen as under-resourced.  With all the shouting about "2 percent" or even "4 percent" at the summit last week, how much will trickle down to this effort in preventive diplomacy?  Luckily, the European Union (EU officials were present too) knows the value of this NATO effort, and is increasing its cooperation in the same region.

This long term and low profile engagement with its southern flank shows that NATO defines security in a holistic fashion.  Limiting the discussion to how much countries devote to military spending - the POTUS doctrine of spending = security - is way too simplistic an approach to collective security.  What if encouraging Med Dialogue partners to invest in coast guard patrols contributes way more in the long run than buying a couple of F-35s?

The Med Dialogue, like much of great value at NATO, has no warships or tanks at its command.  But it does have a network of experienced people committed to dialogue, and the GMF is to be commended for its serious evaluation of this program that contributes to human security, among NATO countries and their neighbors to the south.

Global Voices, Chicago and Tangier

Tangier Global Voices group, plus ALC Tangier staff: IT wizard Rachid El Mziryahi,
teacher Rabia el Antaki, and Director Mark Holbrook

Their voices came wafting up over the Legation courtyard, a springtime Friday evening.  Intrigued, I paid a visit to our group of high school English students enrolled in the Global Voices Initiative program, thanks to our partnership with the American Language Center (ALC) Tangier.  You can watch the videos on the ALC website.

It was practice for their upcoming presentation of a set of three plays, which they developed, wrote in English, and then performed for their audience of American students in Chicago, via a Google + connection.

Meanwhile, the Chicago students were doing the same thing - in Arabic.  Here's how George Bajalia (he's smiling from the corner of the screen in the photo below), former Fulbright scholar in performance studies in Tangier, described the scene in Chicago:

Global Voices Initiative's Chicago end operates in public schools, with elementary, middle, and high schools all focusing on arts exchanges with partner schools across the world. With Morocco, students in Chicago write plays in Arabic, French, and English. Lindblom Math and Science Academy is a public school flagship Arabic program, drawing in students from across Chicago's south side. Lindblom students have two choices for their language learning: Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. GVI connects these students with partners in Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and China to practice their languages through playwriting exchanges.

A few of Lindblom's Arabic language students were chosen by the Qatar Foundation to travel to Doha to participate in an international Arabic language debate, and some will be heading back this summer for a language program. Another student in this year's senior class traveled to Morocco last year for a high school study abroad, spending 6 weeks traveling across the country. Though the focus of the program is Modern Standard Arabic, students get exposure to Arabic dialects in the video conferences and many start their university studies with a full four years of Arabic behind them.

 

Another one of GVI's programs in Chicago is at Kelly High School, where students of English as a foreign language practice their English with playwriting and exchange plays with students with a similar level of English at public schools in Casablanca. The Chicago classrooms are full of native Spanish and Mandarin speakers, and the play topics range from stories of forbidden love in Chicago high schools, to border-crossing travels based on the students' own family histories. Photos and videos of the student's performances are on GVI America's Google + account, located here.

GVI - the Global Voices Initiative - is another great idea coming out of the State Department's embrace of social networks and the need to stretch its cultural diplomacy dollars.

Although I didn't get a chance to see the American students in action - with the time difference, they had to go off to another class, while our Tangier students were doing this on Friday evenings - I was impressed with the level of English of our Moroccan students.

 

Not only did they work to get their English as natural as possible, but they chose subjects that hit home with their concerns about growing up: the play I saw, "The Perfect Bride," dealt with the role of a very assertive mother in the choice of potential marriage partners for her son.

 

How often was Mom initially taken in by a seemingly wholesome future daughter-in-law, only to be confronted by a critical young woman with thoughts of her own.  In the end, the son just marries for love, and Mom will just have to make the best of it.

 

Global Voices, as the State Department puts it rather ungraciously, is a "cheap way" to connect young people.  But that economic argument - probably necessary when dealing with Congressional budget cutters - only tells part of the story.  This is an ingenious idea, and one that is applicable wherever internet connections permit.

 

So TALIM was very happy to host this program - all for the price of a few hours of electricity.

 

Gerald Loftus

Ibn Battuta Returns to Tangier

Yesterday's screening of the film epic Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta was a first for Tangier, the city where "IB" was born and from which he set off in 1325 on the first of what would be three decades of world travel.

Ibn Battuta has the city's airport named after him, and intrepid urban explorers can seek out his tomb in the medina, but there is precious little else here devoted to this Arab Marco Polo.

So it was time to bring IB back to his birthplace.

Yesterday's crowd at our Cinémathèque show was appreciative, and the film showcases the kind of spectacular Moroccan scenery that can depict a medieval pilgrimage from Tangier to Mecca, with every type of setting in between.  The film's producers have put together a great Educator's Guide (Download JTM_Educators Guide), and we were pleased to see a good number of Moroccan students in the audience.

Four years after I originally saw the film and reviewed it for IMDb, we "repatriated" IB to Tangier.

Gerald Loftus

Happy Birthday, IB!

Tim Mackintosh-Smith, author of the erudite and entertaining Travels With a Tangerine, knew Ibn Battuta so well that he took to calling him "IB" throughout his 2000 update of the 14th century traveler's work.

Today, 25 February, is the birthday of Ibn Battuta, Tangier's most famous son, but one who most 21st century Tangerines would be hard-put to define.  He was born here, that much is for sure.  Whether his tomb, hidden away in a particularly difficult-to-find corner of Tangier's medina, is really his burial place - that is less certain.

But no matter.  Tangier's airport is named after him, he's graced postage stamps, and he continues to give that other late medieval traveler, Marco Polo of Venice, a run for his money.  In fact, IB's travels far outstripped those of his Venetian counterpart, who was mostly content with getting to, and safely back from, China.

IB did that, and much more, and wrote about it in his Rihla, or Journey.  You can get a sense of his writing and the amazing extent of his travels from this Saudi Aramco World article, or in this Fordham University "Medieval Sourcebook."

We want to, in a sense, "bring IB back" to Tangier, and hope to do so by showing Journey to Mecca, a sterling docudrama, shot in Morocco and using dialogue from the Rihla.  Subtitled In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta, the screenplay was written by veteran travel writer Tahir Shah, who knows the Legation.

We've been working on this since I saw the film when it first was released in IMAX in 2010, and we're getting close.  Stay tuned.

Gerald Loftus 

Al Jazeera: the Legation "Min Washington"

TALIM Director Gerald Loftus (left) and Abderrahim Foukara (right)

"Min Washington," the Al Jazeera Arabic weekly news magazine hosted by Washington Bureau Chief (and Moroccan-American) Abderrahim Foukara, aired yesterday worldwide (it will be repeated throughout this week; see local listings).

The Tangier American Legation was featured, a full 10 minutes of interviews, exhibits, and lots of history.  Moroccans are proud of Foukara, whose clear style and serious interviews cover the gamut of current events, but also touch on cultural subjects like ours.  Here, the focus was on the longevity of US-Moroccan relations, and the accent on the fact that the American diplomatic post in Tangier was the pioneer permanent presence of the newly independent United States on African soil.

Abderrahim Foukara was moved by his visit to the Legation, and we have former Tanjawi Said Temsamani, now in the United States and a guest on the same "Min Washington" show, to thank for putting us in touch.  Here's Foukara on the Legation:

Visiting the American Legation in the heart of Tangier, a city where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, I could not help seeing, with my mind's eye, both Spain and America. To me, the bridges of co-existence and friendship often begin at the crossings of the future, the present and the past.

You can see the Legation segment on this link, approximately at minutes 35 through 45 (there's also a short soundbite "tease" at the outset).

Text: Gerald Loftus; photos courtesy of Al Jazeera

Arab & US Communicators in Tangier

"AUSACE, the Arab-U.S. Association for Communication Educators was established in 1995 to encourage and support the advancement of professional relationships among Arab and U.S. university faculty and students and media professionals."

AUSACE 2013 has convened in Tangier, and the launch was last night at the Legation.  Thanks to our fruitful partnership with the sponsor, Tangier's King Fahd Advanced School of Translation, we hosted communications educators and practictioners from the Arab world, Europe, and the U.S.

Going beyond the inevitable "Arab Spring" analysis, the participants are devoting the week to discussing everything from "hacktivism" to "translation in wartime."  Workshops in participatory democracy and journalism in times of crisis give a practical tilt to what might have otherwise seemed an exercise in paper-presentation.

From the conference rationale, under the theme of "New Horizons of Communication in a Time of Crisis," some key questions:

• Is it possible to think of communication differently so as to be able to better decipher the crisis phenomena and curb them?
• What is the share of responsibility of the professionals from all fields of media, irrespective of their specialization, in the malfunctioning of intercultural communication systems on the global level?
• Along the continuum between the two extremes; collective commitment and individual responsibility, where does freedom of expression fall, liberty begin and auto-censorship end?
• How can we protect reality against the technological manipulation of facts? What would be the appropriate pedagogical approach to adopt for training our novice journalists and communicators?
• What is the impact of crisis on cross-cultural and cross-religious dialogues?  Are there any links between Occupy Wall Street (OWS), Indignados and the Arab Spring?

Some of the conference participants were return visitors to the Legation, but for most, it was a chance to discover TALIM and to add it to their list of "musts" for follow up research (many were captivated, not only by the building and the museum, but by our library).

For TALIM, welcoming the AUSACE participants was a chance not only to introduce the Legation and the various facets of TALIM, but to highlight our core theme of communication between Americans and Moroccans from the outset of the US in the 1770s.

Gerald Loftus

Bruce Condé - Enigmatic Tangier American

2013 is the centenary of Bruce Conde's birth, not that anyone is marking it.  Conde passed away in Tangier in 1992, not altogether anonymously: The Independent provided a detailed obituary written by Alan Rush, and he was no doubt missed by his friends.  Here, Conde friend and then Tangier expat Graeme Steel provides his memories of Conde, who the Miami News once described as "a new Lawrence of Arabia" during his exploits on the losing monarchist side of Yemen's civil war in the Sixties.  Left: photo of Bruce Conde, courtesy Graeme Steel.

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Yes, I knew Bruce rather well (we called him Bruce, but he signed himself as H.S.H. Abdurrahman B.A. de Bourbon, Prince of Conde).  Just before I left Tangier in 1989 I was helping him on his book on the Battle of the Three Kings by taking photographs of the battle sites and extant remains, which were mostly around the town of Ksar-el-Kebir and Larache.  We travelled and stayed for days. I am sure the book was never published, but I saw the manuscript and it was well nearly completed. I kept in touch with him and saw him a few months before he died of cancer in Tangier in 1992.

When he came to Tangier he was stateless but had joined up with the Knights of Malta Ecumenical and membership of that organization entitled one to a "diplomatic" passport (of no legal standing I gathered) and amazingly he had used this passport to enter Ceuta and the authorities had fallen for it and stamped it on both sides of the border. He also had a stateless persons document from Lebanon (he had fled there after the debacle in Yemen) and he showed me this - a long concertina like document. I do recall that he was granted the honour of the Knights of Malta Ecumenical through his friendship with a man called Alexis Brimeyer, who lived in Spain and was senior in the organization.

In 1984 in Nador (I think) he married Beatrice Dolgorouky, who claimed to have been descended from the Russian / Ukrainian royal families. Bruce adopted Alexis, who was her son. Alexis spent all his time attempting to prove his connection to European royalty. All these extraordinary procedures were some sort of deal arranged to help him with his paperwork. Beatrice did not live with him and I think she returned to Spain. Interestingly enough, through Alexis, Bruce had managed to get some meagre Spanish pension, which may have been a main reason for marrying Beatrice as I think she had Spanish citizenship.

One thing I do know is that he felt stuck in Tangier and unable to cross over to Spain where he could get a full pension (maybe he thought the Spanish would smell a rat with the phony diplomatic passport).  Apparently Bruce had renounced his American citizenship in the 50s when he came to Yemen, converted to Islam and become the Postmaster General, later joining the Royalist forces in the North Yemen Civil War, made rank of General (Bruce wore his Yemeni uniform with full battle honours at his wedding, and his bride was dressed rather regally).

Bruce became romantically entangled with a Tangier Moroccan man. He rented a house for this young man and invested his meager savings in setting up a photographic developing business for him. As often happens in these relations of great economic disparity he was rather taken advantage of and Bruce found himself eventually relegated to an outhouse on the roof, while the family lived in greater comfort below. Bruce had a wonderful collection of old Yemeni memorabilia including a fine silver framed portrait of himself as a general on a tank in the Yemen war.  He also had albums of stamps which he had designed when he headed the country's philatelic office including printing masters. It was a valuable collection I am sure. When Bruce died the young man tried to sell Bruce's things, but in some sort of pique burnt all or some of his things...

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Graeme Steel's account appears to settle the question that has intrigued us since first hearing about Bruce Conde: did he leave any papers behind?  One researcher wondered whether the Legation had been the repository of any of his writings, and our search turned up nothing.  The internet turns up bits and pieces: a list of Bruce Conde's voluminous philatelic articles; an image of a postcard from postwar Japan, giving his US military return address; an account of his fitful presence in Lebanon.

In his obituary of Conde, Alan Rush wrote of "his astonishingly detailed knowledge of things Arabic, Islamic and royal but also of his knack of manipulating facts in order to wrap myths around his own persona."

Bruce Conde's royal pretensions may have come from whole cloth, but the nature of his real life - his World War II service, and later his fighting on behalf of the Yemeni king - provided more than enough color.  Maybe some day we'll find some space on our walls for this American "Lawrence" in Arabia Felix.

Gerald Loftus

Horsemen of an Apocalypse: les Chevaux de Dieu

 

Poster: Cinebel.be

BBC News, May 16 2003:

At least 41 people have been killed and about 100 injured in suicide bomb attacks in Morocco's largest city, Casablanca, local officials say.

Ten years ago, the news of Morocco's first taste of post 9/11 terror hit the country hard, and exposed the dangers of religious extremism grafted on to extreme poverty.

Nabil Ayouch, in his film Les Chevaux de Dieu (Horses of God, official trilingual site) which had its Moroccan debut this week at Tangier's 14th annual National Film Festival, provides a searing portrait of some of the young suicide bombers and their trajectory from street urchin to urban shahid.

One of the strengths of this remarkable film is the way we come to know the group of kids who start out on the mean streets (no, mud alleys) of Sidi Moumen.

Terrorists, you will please note, were once kids, and not necessarily from those spooky madrassas in Pakistan or Afghanistan where they spend all day reciting scripture.  No, kids who play pickup football (okay, soccer).  Whose parents come from a variety of low-or-no-income situations (single mother prostitute, senile father, soldier brother, just to name a few).

Some future terrorists, through luck and/or skill, can wind up kicking the ball with Bayern Munich, and maybe avoid terrorism altogether.  Others, not quite so lucky, can get picked up by the brothers, whether in the prison recruiting grounds or when the bros "help" them get out of trouble with the police.  But this social work sometimes has a deadly mission, as in the case of the Casablanca Fourteen.  Maybe they will have to repay the favor someday with their lives.

Nabil Ayouch opened the film premiere by saying that he wanted to give a non-Hollywoodian treatment to the suicide bombers: instead of anonymous, dehumanized robots, he "provides a human face" to people who have to be counted among the victims.  Their jihadist masterminds send these poor lost souls off to their deaths with a smile, having built up their self-esteem for the one - first and last - time of their lives.

A clue to the sensibility that informs this film is the book on which it is based, Mahi BineBine's "Les etoiles de Sidi Moumen."

"In Sidi Moumen, I discovered a Morocco that I did not know, which shocked me, a sort of Calcutta,'' said the writer, who took five years ''of pain and difficult writing to put an urban nightmare into black and white." (Reading Morocco, April 25 2010).

Mahi BineBine has given the highest praise to Nabil Ayouch for his film, which doesn't reproduce the book but transforms its spirit to film.

Tahir Shah, who lives amidst another bidonville or shantytown on the fringes of Casablanca, writes of urban redevelopment plans to raze the ramshackle neighborhoods:

For six months the engineers have been toiling, building a series of plush apartment blocks... homes for the wealthy that will — soon — overlook our lives. It’s not the high rise apartments for a new wave of Casa Trash [nouveau riche] that worry me, so much as what’s going to happen to the hundreds of ordinary people who live in the bidonville.
Our maid Zenab just told me that a man with a clipboard came round and asked her questions…. how much she earns, how many people in her family have jobs, and whether she has relatives elsewhere in town. She came to work this morning and broke down sobbing, damping her eyes with the corner of her headscarf.  ’They said we will have to leave in a few months,’ she said. ‘But where will we go?’

That's a question best answered by talents such as Nabil Ayouch and Mahi BineBine.

Gerald Loftus

US Scholarship Programs for Moroccan Students

We share information on two US Government scholarship programs for Moroccan students.  Please note the respective 8 February and 18 February deadlines for application.

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1 - Study abroad in the USA with NESA UGRAD

NESA UGRAD, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, provides outstanding Moroccan students ages 18-25 with the opportunity to pursue one academic year of undergraduate studies at an American university.  NESA UGRAD is not a degree program. It is an academic challenge, a cultural immersion and the perfect stepping stone to future graduate studies in the USA.  Download the application form from the Embassy website http://morocco.usembassy.gov/education-culture/exchanges.html from U.S. Embassy Rabat. 

***The application deadline for Morocco is Monday, February 18, 2013.***  Apply today!

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2 - THE 2013 MIDDLE EAST PARTNERSHIP INITIATIVE (MEPI) FOR STUDENT LEADERS PROGRAM

The Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Rabat is seeking candidates for the 2013 Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) for Student Leaders program. University level students between 18 and 24 years of age who have a good command of English; who demonstrate leadership through academic work, community involvement and extracurricular activities; who have a strong interest in civic engagement and learning about the United States and its societal institutions; who have never traveled to the United States, are invited to apply for this program.

The program offers up to three (3) scholarships for Moroccan students currently at university or a higher educational institution. The application deadline is Friday, February 8, 2013.

Program Overview:

                The MEPI for Student Leaders Program will take place in an American University for approximately six (6) weeks, from June 22 to August 3, 2013. The program is designed around the theme of how leadership is conceived and practiced in different capacities (governmental, community, civil society, private sector, etc.) and will address themes including conflict resolution and program dynamic, the role of civil society in the democratic process, and change management.. Student leaders will have a unique opportunity to learn about and discuss values, issues, and institutions that have played important roles throughout the history of the United States.

Participants in this program will live on a U.S. college campus, attend lectures, roundtable discussions, and site visits with academics and civic leaders, meet ordinary American citizens in a variety of cities and towns, engage in local community service activities and, most importantly, have the opportunity to discover the United States and its diverse cultures for themselves. They will be coming from Morocco, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jerusalem, Libya and Yemen.

All participant costs, including program administration, international and domestic travel and ground transportation, book, cultural, mailing and incidental allowances, housing and subsistence will be paid by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) office.

Candidate Qualifications:

The Selection preference will be given to candidates with limited or no travel experience outside of Morocco. MEPI office will not accept candidates who have traveled to the United States.  Participants must demonstrate proficiency in conversational and written English. They may be in any field of specialization, must be prepared to engage seriously in class discussions and other activities, able to inform and educate Americans about the Moroccan culture and society in different activities and in public presentations.

Competition is open to all applicants who meet the following minimum criteria:

a. Are 18 to 24 years of age;
b. Demonstrate English language ability;
c. Are committed to returning to their home country/community following completion of the program;
d. Demonstrate strong leadership potential;
e. Indicate a serious interest in learning about the United States;
f. Have a sustained high level of academic achievement;
g. Demonstrate a commitment to civic engagement;
h. Have no prior travel experience in the United States and limited to no study or travel experience outside their home country;
i. Are willing and able to participate fully in intensive academic; community service, and educational travel activities;
j. Are comfortable with campus life, sharing living accommodations while traveling with a multinational group of participants from the Middle East and North Africa region and with U.S. citizens, and making adjustments to cultural and social practices different from those of their home countries/communities; and
k. Are comfortable spending a portion of Ramadan in the United States.

HOW TO APPLY?

Applications must be submitted by e-mail to  [email protected] by Friday, February 8, 2013 with the subject name of “2013 MEPI Student Leaders”. No late applications will be accepted.

CONTACT

For more information, please contact the Public Affairs Section at [email protected] or call +212-537-66-8187.

Performing the Political in Tangier...

... is not a party political manifesto; rather it is the subtitle of the annual "Performing Tangier" academic conference this year: "Enacting a New Urban: Performing the Political in Tangier."

We are partners with conference organizers ICPS, the International Center for Performance Studies, and disseminate their Call for Papers (CFP) below.  For generalist readers put off by the vocabulary of the performance studies discipline, suffice it to say that the gathering is composed of scholars and practicioners from a wide swath of performance world, stress on world.  It is truly international, and ICPS President Dr. Khalid Amine of Tangier deserves recognition for his ability to carry this off for the better part of a decade.

And it's not all just dry academia: check out that fire-eater in the poster!  TALIM and ICPS collaborated last year in a knockout performance by American actress Dorothy Weems, illustrating what the academics call "site-specific performance."  We again hope to use our historic building - and the two centuries worth of human stories contained in it - to showcase how performance can illustrate history.

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Call for Papers:

“Enacting a new urban: performing the political in Tangier”
1-3 June 2013, Tangier, Morocco

This session aims to explore some of the new urban spatialities created by Tangier’s emergent performative politics. Inspired by Judith Butler’s (1993: 2) understanding of performativity, we would especially like to draw attention here to ‘‘the re-iterative and citational practices by which [political] discourse produces the effects that it names’’ and in particular, the variety of performative practices and (re)enactments that are today challenging pre-existing socio-spatial categories and boundaries in and around the city. Many of these (re)enactments draw upon (and at once make possible) a far-reaching re-scaling of politics, economics and governance taking place in and around Tangier today – but also novel ways of subverting these same through recitation, reiteration and resignification.

We invite papers that focus on such new political and geopolitical ‘stories’ and their accordant (re)enactments of urban spaces and identities, and seek contributions that engage with topics including, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Performing/promoting Tangier as an urban commodity

• The performance of new property regimes and the creation of new spaces of ‘economic exception’

• The border and/in the city

• Fractioned spaces/fractioned mobilities

• New urban identities

• Performing the ‘espace du détroit': new cross-border imaginations

Please forward expressions of interest and paper proposals/abstracts to:

Dr. Luiza Bialasiewicz
[email protected]
Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam (brief bio below)


Please note that we will require the following from all presenters: title, abstract (250 word  max)and a brief bio (one paragraph max). BY JANUARY 31, 2013

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This panel is part of the 9th annual Tangier International Conference,
“Performance in/and the Public Sphere”,  June 1 - 3, 2013, Tangier, Morocco

Full conference info and full CFP (with additional panels) at:
http://collaborativemedia.blogspot.com/2012/09/cfp-performing-tangier-2013.html

Hosted by the International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS) Tangier
http://icpsmorocco.org/new/

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Luiza Bialasiewicz is Associate Professor in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Before moving to the Netherlands in 2011, she was Senior Lecturer in Political Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London and, prior, Lecturer in Geography at Durham University.

Her work focuses on the political geographies of European integration and on European borders, with a particular focus on the ‘geographical imaginations’ of European belonging, within and beyond the territorial confines of Europe. Her current research focuses on EU border management and EU geopolitics, looking specifically at the role of third states in the 'out-sourcing' of EU border controls in the Mediterranean, and her most recent book is the edited collection Europe in the World: EU Geopolitics and the Making of European Space,
published by Ashgate in its Critical Geopolitics series.

--
Partners for International Collaboration and Education (PICE)

George F Roberson, PhD, Chair
Dept of Geosciences, Geography Human Dimensions Research, Univ of
Massachusetts-Amherst

Amherst, Denver, Tangier:
http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/12/welcome.html

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