Discussing International Drug Policy and Border Cooperation
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
9.30 am – 11:00 am
Institute for Peace and Justice, Room 253
University of San Diego
Please join Freerk Boedeltje, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at SDSU, and Constanza Sanchez Aviles, USD’s Trans-Border Institute’s visiting scholar, in a conversation about the international drug control regime and the San Diego-Tijuana Border.
Ms. Sanchez will be discussing her research as part of her dissertation «The International Drug Control Regime & the Global Drug ‘Problem’: alternative policies and resistance to change» while Mr. Boedeltje will present his work titled «Where is the Border? Making Sense of Cross Border Cooperation Between San Diego and Tijuana».
As a political geographer and border scholar, Dr. Freek Boedeltje participated in large scale European Framework projects on cross border cooperation and geopolitics on the external borders of the European Union, in particular the Mediterranean. His research interest includes globalization, geopolitics, global city regions, and border research. At San Diego State University, Freerk is extending his research interests on to the San Diego-Tijuana region as well as the urban centers in Southern California. Originally from the Netherlands, his PhD in Human Geography is from the University of Eastern Finland where he worked as a researcher at the Karelian Institute and the department of Geography. Before appointment as post-doctoral researcher, Freerk was a visiting adjunct professor at San Diego State University from 2010.
Constanza Sánchez Avilés is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and received her LL.M. at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and M.A. in International Relations at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI). Since 2007 she has worked as Teaching Assistant at the Department of Public International Law and International Relations at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she completed her master thesis, entitled «The US war on drugs in Latin America. A study of new forms of hegemonic action». Her research interests focus on political economy of illicit drugs, transnational organized crime and national and international drug control policies. She recently attended the 54th UN Commission on Narcotics Drugs Session, Vienna (2011), and the 4th Meeting of the Observatory of Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, San José de Costa Rica (2010). She has been visiting scholar at the University of Miami (2010) and did fieldwork on drug policies in Peru (2009). Among her recent publications: «Transnational organized crime and illegal drugs. Beyond the traditional conceptions of international security», and «Illicit drug trafficking as a new threat to international security. Linking theory and policy”, both included in collective works published by the Instituto Universitario General Gutiérrez Mellado, Ministry of Defense. Ms. Sánchez will be with the Trans-Border Institute until July 2012.