Christophe Sohn is off on his scientific leave to the University of California San Diego!

After four years acting as Head of the Department Urban Development and Mobility, Christophe Sohn will leave on August 1st, 2016 to the Center for US-Mexican Studies, University of California San Diego as a visiting scholar.

After four years acting as Head of the Department Urban Development and Mobility, Christophe Sohn will leave on August 1st, 2016 to the Center for US-Mexican Studies, University of California San Diego as a visiting scholar. UCSD is one of America's Public Ivy League universities, which recognizes top U.S. public research universities. USMEX is based at UCSD's School of Global Policy and Strategy and is a policy research institute. Since 1979 it has been a go-to source for serious academic research on U.S.-Mexico relations including the international border, informing the implementation and evaluation of public policy.

During his stay in San Diego, Christophe will develop two research projects. They build upon and develop Christophe’s research agenda which focuses on cross-border metropolises, taking advantage of the expertise of and collaboration with resident UCSD researchers as well as the relevance of the location of San Diego for building up a grounded research.

• The first project takes stock of Christophe’s work on the role of borders as a resource and seeks to explore the virtues of a Europe-North America dialogue that aims at context-sensitive comparative analysis.
• The second project intends to assess the process of the social production of the cross-border metropolitan space taking in to account the multiplicity of bordering dynamics.

A second purpose of this visit is to further enhance the research expertise and international reputation of Christophe and by extension of his research group at LISER. Finally, and in line with the foregoing, Christophe’s stay in California will be an opportunity to consider future joint projects and establish long-term partnerships between LISER and key US academic partners in the field of border studies and urban development.

LISER wishes an exciting stay to Christophe in Southern California and looks forward to his return in September 2017.

This visit takes place in the framework of LISER’s scientific leave scheme and is supported by the National Research Fund through the Mobility INTER program.