Prof dr Henk van Houtum is head of the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research and Associate Professor Political Geography and Geopolitics at Radboud University Nijmegen. In addition he is Research Professor Geopolitics of Borders at the University of Bergamo.
Henk van Houtum graduated in Economics at the University of Tilburg, The Netherlands (cum laude). He wrote a dissertation on the relationship between political borders and economics at the same university. In 1998, at the University of Nijmegen, he co-founded the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research.
He is co-director of the master specialisation on Europe: Borders, Identities and Governance and the master specialisation on Conflicts, Territories and Identities. And he is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Borderlands Studies, Association of Borderlands Scholars (ABS).
He published 19 books and more than 100 academic articles (see for all: publications). These publications deal with the following issues:
- The philosophy of borders: epistemology and (im)morality of borders, processes of b/ordering and othering
- Global justice: Wealth differences and equality of access (to resources),
- Conflictous borders: geopolitics of conflicts and identities, divided cities
- Borders in and of the EU: Geopolitics of the European integration, The external border regime of the EU, migrant deaths at the border,
- Designing Borderlands: The development of cross-border governance and planning of borderlands (see for this, the book: Borderland, 2013),
- National and regional identity (including the geopolitical importance of soccer),
- Urban geopolitics and planning: glocal urban politics and identity, and geopolitics of capitalism
He has given a large number of invited lectures, keynote lectures and talks on these topics for academic as well as (inter)national public fora (see here)
In additon, he published almost 200 opinion articles and columns for public national and international newspapers and magazines. Currently, he is a columnist for the Dutch national newspaper Volkskrant.nl and the Dutch regional newspaper De Gelderlander. Earlier, he was a columnist with the title ‘Ach, Europa’ for De Groene Amsterdammer (see for his De Groene columns here) and also for the Radboud University magazine, (VOXweb). He is a regular commentator for various Dutch media, such as the TV programmes Nieuwsuur, EenVandaag and Filosofisch Kwintet, the Radio stations Radio 1 and 5 and the national newspapers Volkskrant, Trouw, NRC, De Groene Amsterdammer, De Gelderlander. In addition, he is a commentator for various international media. Click here for an overview of his columns and media-articles.