Białystok, 7–9 September 2026
We invite submissions of papers focusing on (but not limited to) the following thematic areas:
- definitional boundaries of “borders” and “borderlands” (bordering border studies) as research categories, including their metaphorisation and popularisation; civilisational, national, ethnic, regional, religious, phantom, and other types of borders and borderlands; “non-obvious” borders and borderlands; the border as a practice – borderwork – in contemporary research.
- borders in the territorial sense (lines separating states), as institutions (the reproduction of borders, the context of power, border policies, and the politicisation of borders), including borders as sites (permanent or mobile) of specific securitisation practices; borders as lines creating barriers between different “larger entities” (e.g. the external border of the EU, the Schengen Area border, etc.);biopolitical borders and “COVID fencing” as a form of pandemic-related bordering practices.
- borders as phenomena undergoing specific social processes (bordering, debordering, rebordering) and as focal points where the consequences of these processes become visible; borders and borderlands as spaces of flows of people, cooperation (its actors, determinants, and outcomes), cultural diffusion, and other forms of interaction (as phenomena generating specific effects, such as the borderland effect, the borderland person, etc.); everyday life at the border.
- borders and borderlands as spaces providing a foundation for transnational phenomena (at the macro and mega levels), including migration (discursive deconstruction of borders), multiculturalism, host–guest relations, and related processes; Europe as a borderland (re/de-bordering of, in, and out of Europe); borders in times of war (hospitality–hostility; hos(ti)pitality); the digitalisation and biometricisation of borders.
- socio-cultural borders and borderlands constructed on the basis of ethnic differences, including the categorisations of “one’s own”, “the other”, and “the stranger”; minority–majority–state relations; borderlands as spaces of encounter, inclusion, competition, and exclusion.
- borderlands as areas located “in the vicinity” of a state border, understood as border areas (regardless of the scale and nature of social and cultural interactions occurring among their inhabitants); borderlands as areas located “in the vicinity” of a state border, understood as transborder spaces (i.e. spaces of interaction), closely related to the concept of borderscapes.
- borderlands as imagined and symbolic spaces, deconstructed through discourses, narratives, and performative practices.
- representations of borders and borderlands in visual arts, literature, and popular culture; the musealisation of borders and borderlands.
- the historical heritage of borders and borderlands; borders as scars of history and reconciliation processes in borderlands; borders and borderlands in historical policy and collective memory.
- linguistic borderlands understood as demarcation zones separating or connecting communication communities, as spaces of language contact, transfer, interference, and language hybridisation; borderland languages and linguistic landscapes as tools of power, exclusion, or integration; language policies and discursive constructions of borders.
- economic borders related to the liberalisation or restriction of flows of goods, capital, labour, and services; borderlands as zones of economic interdependence, exchange, and asymmetry, acting as factors of development or peripheralisation; the economic consequences of re-bordering and de-bordering processes at local and global scales.
- environmental and ecological borders related to natural resources, climate change, environmental pollution in borderlands, and the management of natural resources based on the concept of shared ecological responsibility.
- the pedagogy of border studies, teaching Border Studies, educational methodologies, teaching programmes, and publications in the field of border studies and migration studies pedagogy.
We look forward to welcoming you to Białystok, Podlasie, and the borderland!
For more information, including deadlines and registration fees, please follow the link.
https://tdlab.uwb.edu.pl/pl/granice-pogranicza-2026
