The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Benedikt Korf.

Michael Dear is Professor Emeritus in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, and Honorary Professor in the Bartlett School of Planning at University College, London. His graduate education was at University College London and the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to Berkeley in 2009, he worked for two decades at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His most recent book, Why Walls Won’t Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide was awarded the Globe Prize for Geography in the Public Interest from the Association of American Geographers. His latest edited volume, entitled Geohumanties: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place focused on emerging transdisciplinary intersections among geography, environmental design, and the humanities. He is currently curating an exhibition entitled Art of the California-Mexico Border at the Richmond Center for the Arts.

Benedikt Korf is a geographer and freelance consultant in international development. Completing his PhD and a research fellowship at the Chair of Resource Economics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, he has been a lecturer in geography at the University of Liverpool. Since 2007 he is Assistant Professor at the department Department of Geography, University of Zurich.