Located in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the interdisciplinary Centre for International Border Research deals with border reconfiguration and conflict transformation at various levels. The academic staff involved comes from anthropology, geography, political science and sociology. The network represents an opportunity for scholars worldwide to network and exchange research outputs on borders. It does so by a wide range of activities: organization/supporting seminars and conferences, running a visiting fellowship programme, publishing working papers, hosting a well-documented multi-media resource platform. The website provides free access to a large extent of the network. The website documents mainly activities that ran in the 2000s and early 2010s.
In “Contribution B/Ordering in the Greater Region. Mobilities – Borders – Identities” Christian WILLE questions the quadrangle inhabitants' sense of belonging as predicted in the model for regional-political cooperation in the Greater Region. The author examines “which orders of self/other are apparent in the self image of the inhabitants of the Greater Region and to what extent they suggest a cross-border identity” (p. 52) and elaborates on three central features of identity constructions.
The anthology “European Borderlands,” edited by Elisabeth Boesen and Gregor Schnuer, contains an introduction and 11 chapters of content. It deals with everyday practices in European border regions that support social development and cultural identity. Changes in border regions are considered from a historical, sociological, economic, geographical, literary, anthropological or political perspective. The selected case studies are mainly located in border regions between Germany and its neighbouring countries, but also between Belgium and France, Estonia and Finland or Hungary and Slovakia. They show the diversity of border demarcations, which contradict a “borderless Europe” through border narratives.
