Borders: A Very Short Introduction

This second edition of Borders: A Very Short Introduction challenges the perception of borders as passive lines on a map, revealing them instead to be integral forces in the economic, social, political, and environmental processes that shape our lives.

Alexander C. Diener is Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on borders/borderlands, migration/diaspora, urban landscape change, and place attachment. He has authored and edited several books including One Homeland or Two? and Invisible Borders. Professor Diener has been the Regional Research Fulbright Scholar for Central Asia, a two-time Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and a Senior Fellow at both George Washington University and Harvard University. A native of upstate New York, Diener holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Joshua Hagen is Dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He has published widely on a range of topics across human geography, including borders, historic preservation, nationalism, places of memory, territoriality, and urban planning in journals such as Annals of the American Association of Geographers, cultural geographies, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Geographical Review, Journal of Historical Geography, Journal of Urban History, and Political Geography, as well as authoring and co-authoring several books and book chapters.