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Project

Borders and Borderlands Revisited: A Visual and Mixed-method Study of Liminal Spaces and 'In Situ' Experiences

This research project investigates the varieties and dimensions of borders in selected border spaces by documenting the visual and multimodal manifestations of a diversity of borders (geopolitical and non-geopolitical), and through researching their impact on peoples' lives. It advocates and constructs an innovative mixed methodology for studying different aspects of semiotically-charged border spaces which allows to focus on both visual manifestations of various dimensions of borders and on people's actions and reactions towards those materialized expressions. Five distinct border(land) cases will make up the empirical part of this project. These research sites are carefully chosen to question and challenge existing types and typologies of borders and borderlands. The selected five distinct types of 'border' sites within the European realm, each are characterized by different forms of borderland continuation, different levels of border openness, and different dimensions of borders. The part of the field research focused on geopolitical borderlands (borders between nations) will test some of the existing typologies, and will seek to develop more refined alternatives. The fieldwork on dynamic non-geopolitical border sites (e.g. borders within cities) will seek to adapt and expand those border and borderland typologies for broader use and at the same time critically examine the viability and affordances of such a venture.
Date:1 Jan 2019 →  31 Dec 2022
Keywords:THEORETICAL STUDY
Disciplines:Visual communication