Associate Professor Jussi Laine from the University of Eastern Finland has been elected for President of the Association for Borderlands Studies, ABS, effective from 8 April 2020. The Association for Borderlands Studies is a global actor, bringing together some 400 scholars from more than 60 different countries. The ABS is dedicated to promoting networking, collaborative projects and education in border studies, as well as to increasing the field’s societal impact.
Borders are, once again, a highly relevant topic in the global discourse, thanks to cross-border mobility and challenges arising from it. More recently, the coronavirus pandemic has also increased discussion relating to borders.
“Instead of seeking global solutions, closing of national borders and starting to look inwards are often proposed as an answer,” Laine points out.
Laine has been a member of the ABS board in 2011–2014 and he has served as the association’s Executive Secretary and Treasurer in 2013–2017. He also led the organising committee for the association’s first-ever world conference, which was held in Joensuu and St. Petersburg in the summer of 2012.
The ABS is the leading international scholarly association dedicated to the systematic study and exchange of ideas, information and analysis of international borders, and the processes and communities engendered by such borders. The association was founded in 1976 in San Diego, US, with the original impetus for the study of the United States-Mexico borderlands.
The ABS maintains constant relations with academic institutions and associations with similar interests all around the world. The association also organises conferences and events on different continents, and provides support for other events in the field. The ABS is the publisher of Journal of Borderlands Studies.
A print-quality photo of Jussi Laine is available at: https://mediabank.uef.fi/A/UEF+Media+Bank/36348?encoding=UTF-8
For further information, please contact: Associate Professor Jussi Laine, tel. 050 433 8252, jussi.laine(at)uef.fi
