Reece Jones, professor and chair of the Department of Geography and Environment, has been granted a prestigious 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship to continue his research in geopolitics and borders. Jones is among a diverse group of 184 artists, writers, scholars and scientists in the U.S. and Canada selected for fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Almost 3,000 applicants underwent a rigorous peer-review process.
Jones will use the fellowship to complete research for a new book, Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States, which is set for publication in 2022. “We live in an era of globalization, yet much of the world has focused on limiting the free movement of people across borders,” he noted. “This has led to the growth of border patrols to maintain these lines of separation, and increasing violence at borders.”
He has authored the award-winning books Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India and Israel, which received the 2013 Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award for best book in political geography from the American Association of Geographers; and Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move, which garnered the 2017 award for best book in political geography from the Royal Geographical Society.
His upcoming book, White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall, will be published in September 2021 by Beacon Press. Jones is also editor-in-chief of Geopolitics.
