Projects

Workshop: For a renewed Dialogue between History of Borderlands and Border Studies bridging Past and Present Borders

10-11/06/2024, University of Luxembourg 

On 10 and 11 June, historians and specialists in border studies from the University of Franche-Comté, University of Lorraine and University of Luxembourg discussed the opportunities and possibilities of an interdisciplinary dialogue on the topic of border temporalities. This workshop was the first in a series that will culminate in a joint book publication. Discussions focused on concepts, methods and questions from various disciplines that deal with the relationship between borders and time. 

This collaborative project was open to members of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies from the disciplines of social sciences and cultural studies. 



Contact
Christoph Brüll (christoph.brull@uni.lu)
Machteld Venken (machteld.venken@uni.lu)
 

Conference – Borders In Flux and Border Temporalities In and Beyond Europe (15-16/12/2022)

Border studies is an interdisciplinary research field in which scholarship has primarily been spatially oriented. The international conference “Borders In Flux and Border Temporalities In and Beyond Europe” focused on research on the temporal dimension of borders by exploring border practices, border discourses, and analyses of border regimes and life at the border.

The conference program included papers that are related to identity, historical memory, minorities, cross-border experiences, cross-border cooperation, and regionalism. Furthermore, the program also highlights methodological and conceptual issues of researching borders in and through time and space.
 

The program, keynote speakers and more information are available here.

The conference program profited from the collaboration with the working group “Border Temporalities” of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies. The working group has been established to strengthen the temporal and historical dimension of border researchers and includes researchers from the universities of the Greater Region.

The conference was organised by the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) and the Transfrontier Euro-Institut Network (TEIN) in collaboration with the Borders in Globalization (BiG), the UniGR-Center for Border Studies and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Lecture series 2022

29.03.2022, 8 PM

Irene Portas (Université du Luxembourg) : Mass Expulsions at the Belgo-Luxembourgish Border in the Interwar Years: A Historical-Anthropological Approach

The interwar years witnessed the arrival of communist winds from Soviet Russia to Western European industrial centres brimming with national and foreign workers. Such was the case of the Minett, a metallurgic hub at the crossroads of France, Luxembourg, and Belgium. This region hosted, amongst others, many Italian militants operating clandestinely for the communist cause. On their side, national governments, motivated by a prevailing Red Scare, developed legal schemes and policing bodies to get rid of these politically active migrants. By far the most effective method was the issuing of expulsion orders. In most historiographical work on immigration police, expulsions are interpreted as “one-time events”, yet there is a tendency to neglect the way they occurred and the long-term repercussions they had. In this lecture, Irene dives into the historical unfolding of the December 1928 mass expulsions, ordained by the Luxembourgish government and directed at more than fifty Italian communists. By simultaneously employing anthropological and historical angles, she tackles the ambivalent and contradictory situations taking place at the border, where individuals behaved differently than one would expect them to and where the frontier was not viewed as a homogeneous line dividing two state territories. The December 1928 mass expulsions teach us that an event is not merely a step leading to another step-in history. We might instead plunge into the present of past times, and what could have meant to experience the border in those critical moments.

Link: https://unilu.webex.com/unilu/j.php?MTID=ma57d7b93012f4519f3f65b9b3e715dc8 
Meeting number: 2734 473 3128
Password: FjHjchns277

 

Dr. Alena Pfoser (Loughborough University) : Memory and borders: bringing two scholarly fields into conversation 

In this presentation I discuss how memory studies can be used to better understand questions of time in border research. A substantial number of works in border studies have examined collective memory such as memory and nation-building, historical reconciliation and the relation between official and vernacular memories in borderlands. Despite this interest, there is still limited dialogue between the fields of memory and border studies, and as a consequence while memory is empirically explored, it tends to be deconceptualized. This presentation outlines memory as a distinct and fruitful approach to understand border time and to account for border’s processual and contested nature. I show how a memory approach to border temporality is based on three shifts 1) from the linear passing of time to memory as “past-presencing” (Macdonald 2013), 2) from time in singular to the study of multiple and intersecting temporalities and 3) from the tracing of historical change to considerations of memory as bordering device.  

More information available soon

 

14.06.2022, 8 PM

Ass.-Prof. Dr. Christoph Brüll (Université du Luxembourg) : Die Großregion in zwei Nachkriegszeiten: grenzgeschichtliche Perspektiven auf Kontinuitäten und Brüche

Die "sorties de guerre" 1918 und 1945 haben die heutige Großregion - wie viele andere europäische Grenzregionen - stark geprägt. Offensichtlichster Ausdruck waren diverse Verschiebungen von staatlichen Grenzen mit ihren politischen, kulturellen, sozialen und ökonomischen Folgen. Die Beziehungen zwischen Staaten, aber auch zwischen Bewohnern mussten neu konfiguriert werden. In der historischen Analyse treten neben diesen Brüchen jedoch auch Kontinuitäten auf. Der Vortrag geht dieser Thematik aus der Sicht der Grenzgeschichte nach und fragt nach der sozialen Funktion von Grenzen in der Großregion nach den beiden Weltkriegen. Daraus entsteht nicht notwendigerweise eine Beziehungsgeschichte, vielmehr wird deutlich, welches methodische Potenzial der Vergleich für die historische Grenzforschung immer noch birgt.

Link: https://unilu.webex.com/unilu/j.php?MTID=mfb2e377053020bbf464a4766ac5ca1a4
Meeting number : 2733 800 1208
Password: c6dXhUjbT84

Lecture series 2021

12.10.2021, 20:00-21:30

Johan Schimanski (University of Oslo): Temporalities and migratory border-crossings in literature and other discourse

 

09.11.2021 20:00-21:30

Astrid Fellner (Saarland University): Border Temporalities and Deep Maps: Altern(arra)tives in the Canada-U.S. Border Borderlands

 

14.12.2021 20:00-21:30

Andrea Wurm (Saarland University): Die Saarlor-Chemie-Kette als grenzüberschreitende Kooperation in ihrer zeitlichen Einordnung

Fluxus. Lecture series about migration and borders in the Greater Region – with the support of the Greater Region

The aim of our project is to present new research on migration history, industrial history and border history - and the links between the three - at universities within the Greater Region and to discuss them with the general public. Between May 2021 and early 2022, we organise six guest lectures in cooperation with the universities of Luxembourg, Liège, Lorraine, Saarland and Trier.

Contact

Arnaud Sauer, C2DH, Universität Luxemburg
 

24.11.2021  16:30

Machteld Venken (Université du Luxembourg): Peripherien im Zentrum. Schulbildung im Grenzland im Europa der Zwischenkriegszeit

 

13.12.2021 15:30

Claudine Marissal (European University Institute Florence): Construire des politiques sociales dans un contexte frontaliers : le cas des ouvrier.e.s belges dans le Nord de la France