WWU News Release


WWU to Co-Host Border Conference

Contact(s):	Don Alper, director of Canadian-American Studies and the Border Policy Research Institute at WWU, (360) 650-4675 Donald.Alper@wwu.edu	12/20/2007

Western Washington University and the University of Victoria will co-host the ninth international Border Regions in Transition (BRIT) Conference Jan. 12-15. The conference, a collaborative transboundary effort by Western’s Border Policy Research Institute and the University of Victoria School of Public Administration, will focus on North American and European border regions. Key topics will include implications of post 9-11 security measures on borders and border regions, borderland culture, economic transactions, transportation systems and transborder governance arrangements around the world, with particular emphasis on the European Union and North American Free Trade Agreement countries.

The conference will bring more than a hundred scholars, first to Victoria for two days of presentations in Victoria, to be followed by two days of presentations in Bellingham.Participants willtravel from Victoria to Bellingham by boat, and the trip will include presentations on the history of the Canada-United States boundary and marine security issues after 9-11. Several WWU faculty and students will present papers at the four-day conference.

“The conference is unique in that it will move from one country to another,” said Don Alper, conference co-director. “The spotlight will be on the Cascadia border region, an area that is a leader in cross-border cooperation.”

Among the conference participants will be scholars from Canada, Mexico, the United States and several European nations, including France, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland and Finland. Participants from WWUinclude Elliott Smith, the 2006-07 Canadian-American Studies Outstanding Graduate, and nowan MA student who will present on "The Columbia River Treaty: Employing a Useable Past for Negotiating Leverage in the Present." Other WWU presenters includeBidisha Biswas (Political Science), Patrick Buckley (Geography), David Rossiter(Geography), James Loucky (Anthropology), Paul Storer (Economics), Sara Singleton (Political Science), Jason Levy (Huxley College) and Don Alper (Political Science and Canadian-American Studies).

For more information on the BRIT conference, please visit http://publicadmin.uvic.ca/brit_ix/index.html or contact Chuck Hart at (360) 650-3728 or Chuck.Hart@wwu.edu.

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