Maxim Samson is a geographer and the author of Invisible Lines: Boundaries and Belts That Define the World. An award-winning educator and researcher, he has taught and presented keynote lectures at universities in the United Kingdom, the United States and Indonesia. In addition to working as an adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago, he serves as Immediate Past Chair of the American Association of Geographers’ Religions and Belief Systems research specialty group and associate editor of the Journal of Jewish Education. In his free time, he enjoys long-distance running and exploring the culture and language of his favourite country, Indonesia.
My Journey into Writing
For as long as I can remember, I have been engrossed by the world around us. Growing up, reading maps and atlases was an obsession – one that apparently translated into me comparing shapes of the puddles I saw with countries, and obnoxiously chastising my poor parents whenever they struggled to locate an obscure African nation on a jigsaw puzzle. To this day, I cherish the collection of 140+ flags I started as a small child, and only regret not having more space at home to store all my atlases.
My geographical curiosity has evolved considerably over the years. During my undergraduate studies, I particularly enjoyed delving into the perpetually relevant and contested matter of national identity, and wrote my dissertation – on reflection, quite predictably – on the US flag’s connotations as a patriotic symbol. My master’s degree on sustainable cities helped me develop a more holistic understanding of human–environment interactions, before I trained and worked as a secondary school geography teacher for a few years. However, as much as I enjoyed aiming to excite future generations about the subject that had always spurred me, I retained an interest in cutting-edge geographical research and felt that my academic journey had not yet reached its terminus. Bringing together my background in schools with my long-standing interest in identity, my PhD thesis focused on the geography of Jewish education, contextualised within broader disputes over religious schooling and social integration.
In 2017, the year I successfully defended my thesis, I moved from England to the United States, and started working as an adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago the following spring. Since then, I have relished expanding my research repertoire, publishing peer-reviewed works on topics ranging from security concerns at places of worship in the United States to tsunami response in Indonesia, and from the representation of religion at international events to the ways in which students conceptualise sacredness in urban contexts. Running through most of my academic work is a concern with the under-examined intersection between geography, religion and education – one that manifests itself in faith schools, university campuses and even theatrical performances. Over the past few years, I have spoken at various conferences and served in different roles related to this nexus, including as Chair of the Geography of Religions and Belief Systems (GORABS) research specialty group affiliated with the American Association of Geographers (AAG), and as an editor of the Journal of Jewish Education. At the same time, developing and instructing a wide variety of courses at DePaul (including on sacred landscapes, globalisation and urban change) has allowed me to expand my awareness of assorted challenges in the world today and has helped re-kindle my passion for teaching. Part of the fun is the constant challenge of refining my ability to convey complex issues in an easily digestible manner – and occasionally needing to remind myself of certain important differences between British and American English.
It is obvious to state that the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked unforeseen havoc on people’s lives and livelihoods across the planet. All things considered, I was relatively lucky. It was during lockdown that I first considered writing not for an academic audience, but simply for myself. Feeling constrained – by the walls of my diminutive Chicago apartment, by the invisible boundary my wife and I each perceived while teaching our respective classes from the same workspace, and later by social distancing policies beyond our ‘bubble’ – I started to view writing as a creative release rather than an academic necessity. I didn’t originally consider writing a book; it was only later that I realised my short essays on places and issues that interested me or that I happened to be teaching about in class at the time shared a common theme of division. A few months later, I was fortunate to secure not only a terrific literary agent, but a publishing deal for what was rapidly developing into my debut book, Invisible Lines: Boundaries and Belts That Define the World.
I don’t regard Invisible Lines as the culmination of my educational and research journey – far from it. I’m excited to be working on a second book, also concerned with our engagement with the world around us, albeit with a different kind of emphasis – more information to follow in due course! All the same, I recognise that this work materialised through numerous steps and influences in my life to date: the teachers and professors who galvanised my love of geography, the experiences I developed of teaching geography to others; the writing techniques I learnt throughout my education and further honed as an independent researcher; my family and friends for supporting me in countless ways. Despite the horrors of the pandemic, a time I hope we never experience again, I treasure my memories of writing the book, and now hope that others will find something to interest them and prompt them to think and talk about the planet in a whole new way. Of course, it was impossible for me to present every single invisible line on the planet, and I remain curious to learn about other examples of such unseen boundaries in people’s lives. If any examples come to mind, please feel free to share them with me here:
Regardless of where you are right now, I hope this website can be a place where division and discord are supplanted by understanding and healthy discussion. Welcome!