2020 ABS Lifetime Award

Dr. Stephen Mumme

The recipient of the 2020 ABS lifetime achievement award is Dr. Stephen Mumme, Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University. His distinguished career includes a prolific scholarship, mentorship, and promotion of border studies. “Stephen Mumme is one of the most prolific and well-respected border scholars we have been fortunate to have as an ABS member for many years. Whether it is to help students with their emerging research, direct MS and Ph.D. thesis, and work with peers in collaborative research”, said Dr. Chris Brown, Associate Professor at New Mexico State University. Through his work, Stephen has inspired and encouraged numerous scholars “from a vast number of institutions, to work on borderland issues. He is generous with his time, his intellectual thought, his connections, and his support,” added Dr. Donna Lybecker, Professor of International Relations at Idaho State University.

Professor Mumme specializes in comparative environmental politics and policy with an emphasis on the Mexican government and U.S.-Mexican relations. He is the author of various monographs and book chapters, author of Apportioning Groundwater along the U.S.-Mexico Border (UCSD 1988) and co-author with Alan Lamborn of Statecraft Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy Making (Westview 1988). His journal articles appear in many journals, including JBS, Policy Research Quarterly, Policies Studies Journal, and others. He has authored numerous book chapters and opinion pieces–some of the latter have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Denver Post, and the Arizona Daily Star. He has been the recipient of many awards, including Professor Laureate (2019-2021), Distinguished Service Award (2017), and Outstanding Teaching Award (2010). He was ABS President in 1978 and currently serves as a member of the JBS Editorial Board.

2019 ABS Lifetime Award

Dr. Kathleen Staudt

Kathleen (Kathy) Staudt, PhD (University of Wisconsin, 1976), Professor Emerita, University of Texas at El Paso, taught political science, border politics and women studies in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands for forty years, since 1977.  She published twenty books and edited volumes, over half of which focused on borderlands.  She founded and directed UTEP’s Center for Civic Engagement from 1998-2008 and served on many nonprofit and public boards. Kathy has also served on our Association for Borderlands Studies board of directors and in its various committees. She is active in many social justice community organizations. Kathy raised two now-adult children, son Mosi and daughter Asha.

She has been a very valuable member of the Association for Borderlands Studies. She has served on the board of directors and on several committees and conference program advisory groups. Kathy has been an external reviewer over many years and was North American editor for the Journal of Borderlands Studies in 2018. She has made multiple paper presentations and panel chair/discussant at ABS conferences over many years

2018 ABS Lifetime Award

Dr. James T. Peach

Dr. James T. Peach has been selected to receive the 2018 ABS Lifetime Award, to be presented at this year’s annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Peach is a Distinguished Achievement Professor and the Regents Professor of Economics and International Business at New Mexico State University (NMSU). He joined the Association for Borderlands Studies in April 1982, six years after the ABS was established. Since then, he has been a regular presence at ABS meetings and has made a huge contribution to the development of both ABS and border studies as a whole. He has frequently given papers to both the Annual Meetings of the Association for Borderlands Studies and to the wider Western Social Science Association Conferences. He has also made major contributions to both organizations, serving as president of the ABS from 1999 to 2000, as a member of the Executive Council for the Western Social Science Association between 2001 and 2004, and as President from 2005 to 2006.

Dr. Peach received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1978, with his doctoral thesis focusing on questions of land tenancy and development in Bangladesh. He was subsequently appointed as an assistant professor of New Mexico State University in 1980. Since then, he has largely concerned himself with tracing the dynamism inherent in the US-Mexican borderlands, shedding particular light upon its wider demographic issues and economic relations.