Tony Payan

Tony Payan is a professor-researcher at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez and serves as the director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. From 2001 to 2015, Payan was a political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. Since 2009, Dr. Payan has been a Level II member of the National Researchers System.

His research focuses on border studies, exploring themes such as the habitability of liminal spaces, transborder governance, and cross-border flows. He also delves into the Mexico-United States bilateral relationship and related cross-cutting issues. He has authored or co-authored several books on his research topics and edited over fifteen books. Additionally, he has contributed numerous articles to indexed journals and chapters in coordinated volumes.

Dr. Payan has participated in conferences across the United States, Mexico, Canada, Europe, and other countries. He served as the Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Social Sciences at UACJ from 2009 to 2012, was the president of the Association for Borderlands Studies in 2009-2010, and has been involved in various regional initiatives such as the Juárez Strategic Plan and the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority in El Paso, Texas. He is a member of the Migration Commission and the Energy Commission in Mexico at the Greater Houston Partnership.

Dr. Payan earned his Bachelor's degree in Philosophy and Classical Languages from the University of Dallas, his Master's in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Management at the University of Dallas, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Georgetown University.