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• B-SHAPES Annual Consortium Meeting: 20-21 March 2024, Budapest

  The third consortium meeting of the B-SHAPES project took place in Budapest, and the date of the assembly also marked a year since the project’s beginning. The meeting was quite insightful and a great opportunity to catch up on the progress every work package has made so far. B-SHAPES is indeed starting to take shape! Every work package reported that everything is going according to the schedule – which was very satisfying to hear! The creation of the conceptual framework is in its final stages, and the partners involved in the research on euroscepticism in border regions, minorities’ perception of the project, and presenting border landscape as heritage are deep into their work. The development done in those Work Packages means that this is also the time for Work Package 6 ‘Policy and governance: integrating perceptions of borderland citizens into responsive policymaking’ to begin its activities. The second day of the assembly was focused on workshops, where the work packages could discuss their progress and plans for the future. Additionally, the general assembly discussed the ethics of the project, our data management plan, and the Gender Equality Committee has also presented their strategy. We had the opportunity to meet Zsuzsanna Simits, who will be responsible for creating a documentary film on the research and border walks that our partners plan. And it was greatly inspiring to hear about all of the art projects Lungomare is working on. Thank you to everyone involved in the project for the great work you have done so far! And thank you to the host of the meeting, one of the projects’ partners: Eötvös Loránd University International (ELTE). B-SHAPES is a Horizon Europe research and innovation action project funded by the European Union.

• Study visit to the Polish-Czech borderland

  On 11-12th January 2024, a study visit, organized by Elżbieta Opiłowska (UWR) and Hynek Böhm (TUL) took place in Cieszyn (PL) and Český Těšín (CZ). Participants included Marion Oberhofer and Angelika Burtscher from Lungomare, as well as the artist Zorka Wollny, and researcher Artur Boháč from TUL. During the visit, the team met with representatives from the foundation Člověk na hranici, z.s. (People on the border, https://www.cloveknahranici.eu), the dean and other academics from the Faculty of Arts and Educational Science of University of Silesia, in Cieszyn (https://us.edu.pl/en/w-wsne/), representatives from the Laja Foundation (https://laja.pl/o-nas/) and representatives from the Council of Poles in Czech Republic (https://www.polonica.cz/Kongres-Polakow/Struktura/Rada-Kongresu/). The visit aimed at developing collaboration with local stakeholders for academic research within WP4 and artistic intervention.

• Opole conference

  On 12th September a few members of our consortium gathered in Opole, Poland, to present their preliminary research during the “Borderlands facing a polycrisis in the 21st century” conference (co-organised by B-SHAPES work package leader, Elżbieta Opiłowska). The topic of the conference beautifully aligned with our project! During two discussion panels, we had the opportunity to discuss the media narratives in the Hungarian-Slovak, Danish-German, and Italian-Austrian-German border regions. We also talked about the cultural heritage of borderlands, as well as the Euroscepticism, so omnipresent in those regions. A lot of questions were answered, and even more was raised. The meeting in Opole was a great way to not only discuss the research, but also get to know the members of the B-SHAPES consortium better.

• B-SHAPES panel in Island

  At the 29th conference of Europeanists at the University of Iceland, held in June 2023, B-SHAPES’ PI Johanna Mitterhofer and Alice Engl from EURAC organized a B-Shapes-related panel.The panel focused on the content of B-Shapes WP4: Minorities and borders - narratives, practices, policies. It explored the complex meanings borders have for minority communities by studying border narratives and daily life on the Czech-Polish border (Ursula Obrusnik). It also investigated how minorities and their kin states strategically use re/de/bordering tactics to achieve political and economic aims through the case of Sweden-Finnish minority activists in the 1980s (Nina Carlsson and Tuire Liimatainen) and the use of transnational economic networks by kin-state policymakers in Hungary (Myra Waterbury). Finally, the panel critically explored the uneasy relationship between peripheral regions and the nation state by reflecting on the relationship between minority language politics and invasive species control in the Western Isles of Scotland (Cormac Cleary).

• WP3 visit at the Brunel University

  In June 2023, the group working on the WP3 about Euroscepticism and populism in border regions held a project meeting at B-SHAPE's associated partner Brunel University, London.

• Visit in Bulgaria in June

  On the 5-6 June 2023, B-SHAPES coordinator Martin Klatt and the team from Lungomare visited the Bulgarian partner National History Museum. The Museum will be a key actor in our field work in the Bulgarian-Greek-Turkish border region in WP4 on "Borders shaping minorities' perceptions of the European project", and WP5 on "Border landscapes as heritage".

• Inaugural meeting

  B-SHAPES held a kick-off meeting on 19-20 April 2023 in Sønderborg (DK), at the Alsion campus of University of Southern Denmark. At the meeting, representatives of the consortium, which includes eight universities, a research institution and five non-academic partners, had an opportunity to meet and lay out plans for the next months.