Franck Billé

Dr Franck Billé is a cultural anthropologist and geographer currently serving as Program Director of the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies and the Mongolia Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology (2013) from the University of Cambridge and has held academic positions at SOAS (MA in Social Anthropology, 2002) and King’s College, Cambridge (College Research Associate, 2014-2015). His work bridges anthropology, geography, and critical theory, focusing on sovereignty, territoriality, and border studies.

His research program explores three theoretical frameworks:

• Volumetric States: Challenging flat sovereignty models through materiality of air, subterranean spaces, and non-Euclidean geometries.
• Corporeal Geopolitics: Analyzing nation-body analogies in cartographic practices and border trauma narratives.
• Topological Borders: Reimagining political space through relational vectors rather than fixed geographies.

Recent publications include Voluminous States (2020), Somatic States (2025), and co-edited collections on the Maritime Silk Road (2022) and global Sinophobia (2018). He contributes to debates on geopolitical unconscious, spatial containment, and multi-scalar sovereignty. His fieldwork spans Russia-China border cities, Mongolia, and comparative sites like Baarle-Hertog/Nassau. He employs interdisciplinary methods combining cartographic analysis, ethnography, and material culture studies.