Dr. Olivier Walther 
Associate Professor
Affiliate Faculty, Center for African Studies
Faculty Member, Sahel Research Group
Coordinator, African Networks Lab
Phone: (352) 273-4739
Email: owalther@ufl.edu
Personal website
Curriculum vitae
UF Scholar Profile
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-5768-2845
Focus Areas
- Focus Area 3: Places, Networks, & Flows
- Focus Area 4: Geopolitics & The Global Economy
- Focus Area 5: Catastrophes, Conservation, and Conflict
Research Statement:
I am an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Florida and an affiliated researcher at the UF Sahel Research Group. Before coming to Florida, I held faculty appointments at the University of Southern Denmark and Rutgers University and worked as a researcher at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research. In the last 15 years, my research has focused on the development of cross-border trade and the emergence of transnational political violence in West Africa. I have conducted fieldwork in Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Mali, Mauritania, and Ghana. My research has pioneered the introduction of social network analysis to the study of borderlands in West Africa. I have served as a lead investigator or collaborator on externally funded research projects from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the United Nations, the OECD, the European Commission, the European Spatial Planning Observatory, and the national research funds of Denmark and Luxembourg. Currently, I am coordinating the West Africa research program of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD/SWAC), with a core objective to better understand political insecurity in the region. I am an Associate Editor of Political Geography and a “chief” of the African Borderlands Research Network (ABORNE).
Recent Courses
- GEO3502, Economic Geography
- GEO4024C Terrorism and Space
Recent Funded Projects
- 2023-2024. Monitoring the Spatial Evolution of Conflicts in North and West Africa II. Principal Investigator (PI). Funded by the OECD.
- 2023-2025. Integrating socio-economic and remotely sensed information to characterize conflict precursors and land degradation dynamics in Ghana, Co-Investigator (Co-I). Funded by NASA SERVIR-USAID.
- 2021-2022. Monitoring the Spatial Evolution of Conflicts in North and West Africa I. PI. Funded by the OECD.
- 2021-2022. Inclusiveness and Diversity as Building Blocks of Resilient International Research Teams in the Age of COVID-19. Co-PI. Funded by the National Science Foundation.
- 2020-2022. Linking deforestation, urbanization, and agricultural expansion for land-use decisions in Ghana (GALUP). Co-I. Funded by NASA SERVIR-USAID.
- 2019-2020. Insecurity in the Sahel. PI. Funded by the OECD.
Recent Publications
Walther O, Prieto-Curiel R, Padron J, Scheuer J. 2023. Mapping the travel geography of the 9/11 network. The Professional Geographer (online).
Trémolières M, Walther O, Radil S. (eds) 2023. Urbanisation and Conflict in North and West Africa. Paris, OECD Publishing.
Walther O, Radil S, Russell D, Trémolières M. 2023. Introducing the Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator of political violence. Terrorism and Political Violence, 35(3): 533-552.
Radil S, Irmisher I, Walther O. 2022. Contextualizing the relationship between borderlands and political violence: A dynamic space-time analysis in West and North Africa. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 37(2): 253-271.
Rojas J, Walther O. 2022. Revolutionary insurgents or conservative reactionaries? National Liberation Army’s transnational expansion in Colombia and Venezuela. Journal of Latin American Geography 22(2).
Trémolières M, Walther O, Radil S. (eds) 2022. Borders and Conflict in North and West Africa. Paris, OECD Publishing.
Walther O, Radil S, Russell D. 2021. Mapping the changing structure of conflict in North and West Africa. African Security, 14(3): 211-238.
Skillicorn D, Walther O, Leuprecht C, Zheng Q. 2021. The diffusion and permeability of political violence in North and West Africa. Terrorism and Political Violence 33(5): 1032-1054.
Prieto Curiel R, Walther O, O’Clery C. 2020. Uncovering the internal structure of Boko Haram through its mobility patterns. Applied Network Science 5(28): 1-23.
Valerio V, Walther O, Eilittä M, Cissé B, Muneepeerakul R, Kiker G. 2020. Network analysis of regional livestock trade in West Africa. PLoS ONE 15(5): 1-15.
Educational Background
- PhD in Geography, University of Lausanne, 2006
- M.S. in Advanced Studies in Development Studies, University of Geneva, 2004
- M.S. in Geography, University of Lausanne, 2001
- B.S. in Geography, University of Lausanne, 1999
Current Graduate Students
Recent Graduate Students