Borderland Environments Initiative

An interdisciplinary environmental history initiative grounded in partnerships across disciplines at UNM and with other institutions across the U.S. West, focusing on the entangled borderlands of human and non-human worlds in a context of global change and planetary mobility.

About Borderland Environments

We live in a world of seemingly unprecedented motion.  As zoonotic diseases, wildfires, climate change, and habitat conversion—but also colonialism, warfare, and ethnic cleansing—set human and non-human communities in motion, we are increasingly forced to concede that older ways of seeing our world—as a set of clearly demarcated communities and ecosystems—is swiftly tilting off kilter. The planet is characterized more than ever by its crossings.  Borderlands—the realms where people, their non-human kin, and the basic historical units of life cross over and rewire the planet in new ways—are increasingly moving to the fore as the kinds of spaces that we must now understand as we move forward into an uncertain future.

This interdisciplinary initiative seeks to place New Mexico and its borderlands in a larger, global conversation ties to environmental change, migration, and the dynamics of place making.  It will attempt to develop cross-field approaches to the study of global borderlands in social, ecological, and political contexts—with the idea that borderlands and their crossings will be primary anchor points for mapping present and future global coordinates.  It seeks to leverage our unique place in the borderlands of North America, Latin America, and Native America to develop high-profile projects, collaborations, and interdisciplinary networks.