UniGR-CBS-Fellow

Damien Simonneau was a lecturer in Political Science at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, where his research focused on contemporary border security. He was at the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern in November and December. The focus of his research stay turned to differentiated adaptations to Brexit in the Greater Region, in order to study the opportunities and pitfalls of a digitized governance of cross-border trade flows.

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Joanna Kurowska-Pysz is the researcher and lecturer at the WSB University in Dabrowa Gornicza, Poland and also works on the position of the Director of the Research Institute on Territorial and Inter-Organizational Cooperation. She was at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern during two periods from 1st November to 17th December 2021, working together with Karina Pallagst.. Her project during the research stay aimed to analyse the changes in cross-border cooperation barriers, especially in the context of the pandemic, with regard to the varying maturity levels of cross-border cooperation, as well as to develop partnerships in the field of border studies.

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Tracie Wilson is a Research Associate at the Aleksander Brückner Center for Polish Studies at Martin Luther University in Halle Wittenberg. She stayed at Trier University from mid-October to mid-December and worked with Antje Bruns. During her research stay, she wrote a journal article that examined the nexus between Border Studies and research on more-than-human worlds.

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Hedwig Wagner is a professor at the University of Flensburg. She was at the University of Lorraine at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Lorraine in October–November 2021, where she worked with Angeliki Monnier (CREM) and Grégory Hamez (Loterr). Her research topic during this stay was "Mobile media and data in a cross-border context: Interdisciplinary interface between geography and media science."

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Johan Schimanski is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo. He was at Saarland University in September, working together with Astrid Fellner from Saarland University and Christian Wille from the University of Luxembourg. His project during the research stay focused on a literary approach in Border Studies.

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Oleksiy Kiryukhin was Head of the Ukrainian-Francophone Academic Centre at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. He was at the University of Liège from 1st to 30th September as well as from 1st to 19th November 2021, working together with Prof. Quentin Michel and Dr. Sylvain Marbehant. His project during the research stay focused on regional development and sustainability.

Jussi Laine is professor of multidisciplinary border studies at the University of Eastern Finland and President of the Association for Borderlands Studies. He was at the University of Luxembourg from 16th August to 15th October 2021, working together with Astrid M. Fellner from Saarland University and Christian Wille from the University of Luxembourg. His project during the research stay involved conducting research on counter-Europeanisation tendencies and developing partnerships in the field of border studies.

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Elżbieta Opiłowska is currently Associate Professor and Director of Center for Regional and Borderlands Studies at University of Wroclaw, Poland. She spent the months of July and September at the University of Luxembourg, working together with Christian Wille. Her project during the research stay aimed to develop cooperation with the Center for Regional and Borderlands Studies (University of Wrocław) and to analyze strategies of cross-border institutional actors in the context of Covid-19 (re)bordering.

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Dr. Daniela Johannes, who is originally from Chile, is currently Associate Professor and Director of Latin American and Latinx Studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, USA. She spent the months of June and July at Saarland University, working together with Prof. Astrid M. Fellner in the field of Chicano Studies. Her project focused on the significance of the Sonoran Desert environment as a crucial aspect of U.S. securitization, which propels a politics that controls death by natural causes as a way of conserving the life of the nation. She worked on recent Chicano writings, in which the border figures as a landscape of torture, disappearance, and death.

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From April to May 2022, Alina Mozolevska worked at Saarland University as part of a two-month scholarship granted by the Interreg V A Greater Region project. The language and literature specialist from Petro Mohyla Black Sea State University in Mykolayev was a professor at the Philological Institute and specialized in cultural border studies, media studies, critical discourse analysis, and textual linguistics. Alina Mozolevska was also already familiar with the UniGR-CBS, particularly through the German-Ukrainian cooperation project "Borderland Stories", which involved students from the Master in Border Studies and for which she served as scientific leader in 2021.

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2nd Practice Day Border Studies

The second practice day in the framework of the UniGR-CBS Chair in Border Studies took place on 4 September 2019 in Esch-Belval, jointly organised by Astrid Fellner (Saarland University) and Christian Wille (University of Luxembourg). The participants were university teachers and Master students from the Greater Region.

First, Michael Sohn from the city network Quattropole informed the participants about the daily work and challenges of cross-border work in the Greater Region. Elisabeth Venohr then introduced the participants to the topic of language skills in a multilingual context with an interactive presentation. Finally, an intercultural training with Claudia Heß took place in the afternoon. It was an opportunity to test the participants' intercultural skills and to prepare them for a multicultural working environment.

The second practice day was devoted to the skills required to access the cross-border labor market. The appropriate number of participants made it possible to deal intensively with the question of which competences and knowledge are needed in border regions.

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Borders and Migration in Literature, Cultural Studies and Law

The seminar "Borders and Migration in Literature, Cultural Studies and Law" took place on 4 and 5 July 2019 at Saarland University, organized by Cécile Chamayou-Kuhn in collaboration with the CJFA (Centre juridique franco-allemand) in the framework of her UniGR-CBS Chair in Border Studies.

Researchers from the fields of literature, border studies, cultural studies and law took part in this interdisciplinary event and discussed the question of the extent to which the drawing of boundaries generates conflicts and what significance should be attached to them. As cultural and social narratives, are literature and law places of articulation, construction or questioning of borders?

On the first day, the researchers presented their research areas and projects and young researchers and master students presented their final theses. On the second day, lectures on legal topics were given, followed by a World Café in the afternoon, where links between disciplines were established. The participants agreed that this interdisciplinary approach between literature, culture and law opened up interesting new perspectives on the topic.

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Careers day - Career opportunities for Border studies graduates

On 18 June 2019, Christian Wille (University of Luxembourg) and Astrid Fellner (Saarland University) organised the first Border Studies Careers Day. Over 30 participants from the Greater Region came to Saarbrücken for the occasion, including undergraduates and master's students, professors and nine practitioners with experience of cross-border cooperation.

Contributors representing the media, the cultural and migration fields, local and regional authorities and spatial planning bodies took part in two round table discussions, talking about their daily work and the main challenges they face. These range from differences in training and career progression to issues touching on accountability, language and culture. Other authentic insights on cross-border career opportunities were presented to the students during the general discussion, and there were opportunities for personal exchanges during the "Walking Lunch".

As Judith Wörz, a student on the Border Studies master's course, confirms, this careers day successfully confronted practitioners' experiences with the expectations of future graduates: "The Border Studies careers day showed me how important it is to have a cross-border professional network. I also found it interesting to see what characteristics and skills the guests speakers consider important in cross-border jobs. In addition, I was also given some useful advice on how to apply for jobs after I graduate."

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Workshop Migration / Integration / Region

The subject of the workshop led by Massimiliano Livi (Trier University) on 5 April at the University of Lorraine in Metz was the relationship and complex interactions between migration, integration and region. After the opening talk given by Dr Livi, "Overcoming thinking about borders? The employment market and regional integration", four other guest speakers gave talks illustrating the subject with empirical examples. "The guests [Dr Alexander Kraus/Michael Siems (Wolfsburg), Dr Anna Marsden (Prato), Dr Christoph Lorke (Münster) and Dr Kurt Gritsch (Basel)] form the core of a network that I have been able to strengthen thanks to the Chair," explains the historian, adding "At the CEGIL (The Intercultural German Studies Centre of Lorraine) at the University of Lorraine in Metz, I have been able to work together with Professors Reiner Marcowitz and Françoise Lartillot on my research topic "The dynamic local process of negotiation on migration and integration in the Greater Region since the 1970s" and to exchange with them in person".

During the workshop, today's migratory flows and the transfer and orientation functions linked to society and politics were addressed from the integration perspective. The role of history was also discussed. To summarise, the aim is to analyse the local, regional and cross-border realities that play a central role in understanding integration processes, both at local level and gloabally.

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Workshop - Cross-border spatial planning: Dialogue between research and practice

Beate Caesar (Technische Universität Kaiserslautern) spent a research secondment in the geography department of the University of Luxembourg between February and April 2019. The theme of her workshop held on 9 April 2019 at the Maison de la Grande Région in Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg) was "Cross-border spatial planning: Dialogue between research and practice".

Under the direction of Beate Caesar and Estelle Evrard (University of Luxembourg), the possibilities and limits of territorial development in a cross-border context were discussed with practitioners, researchers, students and other stakeholders from public institutions. Among other things, the particularities of spatial planning culture in France, Luxembourg, Wallonia and Germany were subjected to an experimental assessment by means of a live survey – questions included, for example: to what extent do spatial planning tasks differ in the countries of the Greater Region? What influence do politics, private investors and spatial planning specialists have on the management of territorial development? This was followed by a lively debate on the relevance of spatial planning cultures to the practice of cross-border territorial development. It became clear that spatial planning is defined in very different ways in the countries of the Greater Region, complicating cross-border cooperation in this field. Legal and administrative differences were also a dominant theme. In spite of all the differences and all the challenges, the participants stressed the value and importance of cross-border cooperation in spatial planning in bringing the countries of the Greater Region closer together.

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