Department of Geography
Email: owalther@ufl.edu
Phone: 352 273-4739
Office Location: 3205 Turlington Hall
Areas of Specialization: conflicts and terrorism, borders, regional integration, social network analysis, spatial analysis, West Africa
Dr. Olivier J. Walther is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Florida (UF) and the coordinator of the UF African Networks Lab. He is also an Affiliate Faculty at the Center for African Studies and a Faculty Member at the 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. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Dr. Walther’s current research focuses on cross-border trade and transnational political violence in West Africa. Using social network analysis, his research examines how borders affect the social networks and spatial patterns of West African traders and violent extremist organizations. Dr. Walther has conducted fieldwork in Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Mali, Mauritania and Ghana. He have served as a lead investigator or collaborator on externally funded research projects from the OECD, the United Nations, NASA, the European Commission, the European Spatial Planning Observatory, the Danish Agency for Science and Technology and the Luxembourg National Research Fund. Currently, he is coordinating the West Africa research program of the OECD, with a core objective to better understand conflict and insecurity in the region
Dr. Walther is the Africa Editor of the Journal of Borderlands Studies, a “chief” of the African Borderlands Research Network (ABORNE) and on the advisory board of the African Governance and Space project.