Areas of Specialization: conflicts and terrorism, borders, regional integration, social network analysis, spatial analysis, North and West Africa.
Dr. Olivier J. Walther an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Florida and an affiliated researcher at the UF Sahel Research Group. Before coming to Florida, he 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.
In the last 15 years, his research has focused on the development of cross-border trade and the emergence of transnational political violence in West Africa. Dr. Walther has conducted fieldwork in Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Mali, Mauritania, and Ghana. His research has pioneered the introduction of social network analysis to the study of borderlands in West Africa.
Dr. Walther has served as a lead investigator or collaborator on externally funded research projects from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the United Nations, the OECD, the European Commission, the European Spatial Planning Observatory, and the national research funds of Denmark and Luxembourg. Currently, he is coordinating the West Africa research program of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with a core objective to better understand political insecurity in the region. He is an Associate Editor of Political Geography and a “chief” of the African Borderlands Research Network (ABORNE).