Dr. Christopher P. Brown
Since becoming interested in U.S.-Mexico border issues while doing his Ph.D. work, Christopher Brown has researched binational water resource issues on the U.S.-Mexico border. Brown’s specific areas of interest include binational water resource policy and the use of applied GIS tools to examine water quality and supply in twin city regions along the U.S.-Mexico Border.
Brown has a particular interest in comparative studies of these twin cities; at the root of these studies is the desire to see how the regional geographies involved in each area support various policy initiatives. In the last several years, Brown has also focused on the above issues in a “North American context,” exploring a framework that has been advanced by Robert Pastor that explores the idea of a “North American community.” In this work, Brown has explored comparative analysis of water resource management frameworks on the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders. Brown has also explored metrics by which the quality of life of U.S.-Mexico border residents can be measured. In this work, he completed the development of a human development index for Doña Ana County, working with Madelyn Schoderbek and Randy Carr, staff members with the Spatial Applications and Research Center (SpARC) Lab.
From 2020 to 2023, Brown served as the Inaugural Fellow for the NMSU Beyond Borders Community of Practice (BBCoP). BBCoP is an initiative out of the NMSU’S Provost’s Office to reboot NMSU’s border research and scholarship efforts. In this work, Brown collaborated with David Ortiz, the Faculty Fellow for the Center for Latin American and Border Studies, and other people at NMSU with an interest in border research and scholarship.
Research Interests
U.S.-Mexico border water resource policy; U.S.-Canada border water resource policy; quality of life and human development issues in US-Mexico borderlands
Education
B.A. Economics, San Diego State University, 1986
M.A. Geography, Michigan State University, 1991
Ph.D. Geography; San Diego State University / University of California, Santa Barbara, 1998
Courses Taught
GEOG 328, Geography of Latin America
GEOG 361V, Economic Geography
GEOG 365, Urban Geography
GEOG 435/535, Environmental Planning
GEOG 501, Geographic Thought and Research Design
GEOG 521, GIS Applications
GEOG 585, Advanced Spatial Analysis
Contact
575-646-1892 (Phone)
575-646-7430 (Fax)
Breland Hall, Room 149
brownchr@nmsu.edu
