BEYOND BORDERS supports research about borders and boundaries in past and present times. It promotes interdisciplinary exchange in the social sciences and humanities. The Call for Applications 2023 was open until 1 March 2023 and focused on "Borders, Contestation and Conflict".
Since last year, Poland has implemented two radically different migration policies at the border to the Ukraine and at the border to Belarus. While migrants arriving at the Ukrainian-Poland border encountered fast procedures and a supportive infrastructure, refugees at the Polish-Belarusian border are facing harrowing conditions. What are the consequences of these differences in practice? What is the role of EU-institutions in the management of the Polish borders? Will other EU outer borders see similar developments?
The first Border in Focus seminar, taking place 12-16 June 2023 in Poland, addresses these questions. Next to discussions on social and humanitarian aspects of EU border management, the seminar itinerary includes consultations with civil society organizations and local experts as well as excursions to the Polish border regions. The seminar brings together academics and journalists working on border-related issues to explore exchange between scientific and journalistic perspectives may sharpen the analysis of the EU border management. Attendance of the seminar is free. The ZEIT-Stiftung will cover the accommodation and travel cost.
Interested journalists may find further information regarding the contents of the seminar and the application process here.
Borders are an integral part of our everyday life. Political, social, virtual, intellectual, and cultural borders are hotly contested, both in international contexts around issues of migration, security, trade, or global education and within nations trying to deal with increased diversity and changing notions of national identity and culture. Geographical borders separate states, regions, and cities. They mark the breadth and depth of territorial organization while informal symbolic and social boundaries define values and norms for social, cultural, and religious life. All types of borders can be conceived as social constructs: they may refer to cultural and historical contexts, result from international treaties or political negotiations or reflect public debates on controversial topics. In our increasingly globalized world in which human mobility and the constant circulation of goods, objects, ideas, and practices are also an integral part of everyday life, the importance of border making and crossing is growing. Borders and cross-border regions function therefore as manifestations of social, political, economic, and cultural change.
Borders’ violations have been back in the breaking news since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The war expanded the armed conflict from the Donbas region to a large part of Ukrainian territory. Following the annexation of Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the Russian Federation has attempted to incorporate further occupied areas to its state territory. The leadership in Moscow has been openly questioning the integrity and sovereignty of the Ukrainian state.
The war in Ukraine together with further ongoing border disputes and clashes, i.e. between China and India, Ethiopia and Sudan or Armenia and Azerbaijan show that multilateralism is currently at stake. As the Permanent Representative of Kenya to the United Nations, Martin Kimani, underlined in his speech given on the 21st of February 2022 at the emergency session of the UN Security Council on the situation in Ukraine, a renewed commitment to international cooperation is needed for worldwide peace and security. He invoked his nation’s struggle for independence from the British Empire and the necessity to consent to existing borders despite their colonial heritage. Can defining the limits of jurisdiction and governance ensure peace and the international order? And what would or could this 'international order' look like?
How did state borders develop historically in different parts of the world? How do they relate to cultural and social boundaries and depend on historical – national, imperial, colonial etc. – heritage? And what does territoriality mean today in times of geopolitical competition and changing domestic environments? How do borders contribute to the definition of sovereignty and belonging? What are their origins and how have they been transformed in the past and present times? What are the prospects of cross-border cooperation and integration?
Questions concerning borders, their contestation as well as territorial conflicts and disputes are the focus of the current call for applications for Ph.D. scholarships. We encourage applications for projects concentrating on following aspects, although other topics will be also considered:
We invite applications from Ph.D. students worldwide studying borders and bordering phenomena in different regions of the world. Both empirical research based on extensive fieldwork and projects centered on theoretical reflection are eligible for support. Innovative and challenging research questions as well as comparative approaches are highly welcome.
Start Up Scholarships
for advanced master’s students and Ph.D. students in an early stage of project formulation
Duration: 10 months
Monthly living stipend of € 1,200
Dissertation Proposal Development Workshop
Ph.D. Scholarships
for Ph.D. students enrolled in Ph.D. programs or admitted to an individual Ph.D. scheme
Duration: one to three years
Monthly living stipend of € 1,400
Yearly Students’ Conference
Dissertation Completion Scholarships
for advanced Ph.D. students
Duration: one year
Monthly living stipend of € 1,400
Yearly Students’ Conference
Akosua Adomako Ampofo
Professor at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon
President, African Studies Association of Africa
Michael Goebel
Einstein Professor of Global History, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Peggy Levitt
Chair, Department of Sociology, Wellesley College
Associate, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Co-Founder, Global (De)Centre
Noora Lori
Assistant Professor of International Relations, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
Steffen Mau
Professor of Macrosociology, Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Ranabir Samaddar
Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group
Jens Schneider
Senior Researcher at the Institute of Migration Studies and Intercultural Studies, Universität Osnabrück
Co-Founder, Global (De)Centre
Sören Urbansky
Head of Office & Research Fellow, Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington at UC Berkeley
Visiting Professor, Department of History, Central European University Vienna
PAULINE ADAM
Quantification Devices of Irregular Migration at the European Union Level: Between ´computational coalitions´ and Use in Migration Governance
Université Libre de Bruxelles / École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
JOSEPHINE AKINYOSOVE
Black Politics, Activism and Identity in Western Europe: Negotiations, Continuities and Visions
University of Hamburg
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
OSCAR APONTE
The Roads to Rural Colonization: A Regional History of Putumayo, Colombia, 1893-1977
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
ERIC ELIKEM ASHIABI
Contested Citizenship and Social Cohesion: A Comparative Study of the Ewe and Mande Cross-Border Ethnic Groups in West Africa
University of Duisburg-Essen
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
PETER AWODI
Politics of Identity: Colonial Border Delineation, Belonging and the Securitization of the Anglophone People of Cameroon
University of Ibadan
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
LAURA CHARNEY
A Tale of Two Treaties: Adjudicating Canada’s Colonial Borderlands
McGill University
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
DAIGENGNA DUOER
Buddhism Beyond Nations and Empires: Mapping Transnational Buddhist Networks from Early Twentieth-Century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria
University of California Santa Barbara
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
WALID HABBAS
The Political Economy of the West Bank-Israeli Economic Relationship: Class and Sectoral Analysis
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
JACQUELIN KATANEKSZA
Running in the Shadows: Fugitive Movements Across and Beyond the Dark City
The New School
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
THEA KIRSCH
Care or Control? The Safety/Security Nexus and the Externalization of Europe's Borders
Freie Universität Berlin
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
MAGDALENE KLASSEN
Good Work: Jewish Sex Work and Transnational Human Rights Work, 1885 – 1931
Johns Hopkins University
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
ROMAIN LANNEAU
Respect for the Duty of Care and Data Quality a Guarantee for the Rule of Law in Asylum Procedure in the European Union
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
more about Romain Lanneau >>ALEXANDER MAIER
Paper-Work: The Political Economy of Migration, Labor, and Documentation in Postsocialist Moscow
Columbia University
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
JAMES MEADOR
Making Chinese Orthodox
University of Michigan
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
NICHOLAS NYACHEGA
Borderlanders, Contested Sovereignties, and Everyday Life in North-Eastern Zimbabwe, c.1890s to 2021
University of Minnesota
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
ZORA PISKAČOVÁ
Torn Towns: Civic Elites between Local Belonging and Nationalization in Cieszyn and Český Těšín, 1919-1938
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
BURAK SAYIM
Transnational Communist Networks in the Post-WW1 Middle East: Anti-Colonialism, Internationalism and Itinerant Militancy, 1919-1928
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
LUKAS SCHMID
Enforcing Borders and Preventing Immigration: A Normative Appraisal on Two Levels
European University Institute, Florence
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
GIRMA DEFERE TEGEGN
Effects of Cross-Border Population Mobility on Environmental Resource Governance and Sustainability: Case of Ethio-Kenya
Jimma University
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
ANRAN WANG
The Model Borderland of Maoist China: Identity Politics and Ideological Contentions in Inner Mongolia, 1945-1966
Cornell University
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
ZAKARIA AL SHMALY
The Local Context of Refugee Political Socialisation: A Mixed-method Analysis of Syrian Refugees in Germany
United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology,
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
YAA OPAREBEA AMPOFO
Circuits of Sense-Making: A Study of Youth Experiences of Human-Earth Relations, Ecological Knowledge, and Environmental Change in Ghana
University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
SAHAR BOSTOCK
Desert Colonization: Ottoman, British, and Zionist Development in Southern Palestine, 1830-1950
Columbia University in the City of New York,
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
LUNA CARRASQUER
Women Fight, Women Write: Renegotiating the Borders of the War Canon
Utrecht University, University of Oviedo,
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
ELERI CONNICK
The Diaspora as Cultural Creative Spaces
University of Amsterdam,
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
LINA GABRIELA CORTÉS
Artistic Productions of the Brazil-Uruguay Border: Mixed Portuñol
National University of San Martín,
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
ARNAB DUTTA
In Search of an Alternative Europe: Germanism in the Bengali Imagination, 1919–1945
University of Groningen,
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
KARL HEYER
Ambiguous Policy, Uneven Implementation, Discretionary Practices. A Situated Analysis of Fragmented Spatio-legal Bordering Dynamics in the post-2015 European Border and Migration Regime on Sicily
Universität Osnabrück,
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
MARQUISAR JEAN-JACQUES
Lines Drawn in the Sand: The Shifting Boundaries of Kali’na Territory at the Mouth of the Maroni River
Université de Guyane,
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
SUVI LENSU
Cosmopolitanism from the Margins – Embodied Migrations, Beauty and Belonging amongst Rwandan Cross-Border Sex Workers
The University of Edinburgh and Aarhus University,
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship
DAVID MOTZAFI-HALLER
A Nation of Families among the Family of Nations: Upwardly Mobile Israeli Developers and their Families in the Middle East and Africa, 1926 – 1979
The Geneva Graduate Institute
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
SHREYA PARIKH
Race and Racialization in North Africa: The Case of Blackness in "Arab" Tunisia
L’Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
NAMA'A QUDAH
Paths of Displacement and Refuge: Tracing the Movement in Al Wehdat Camp in Amman, Jordan
Delft University of Technology,
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
ANDREAS STOIBER
The Social Life of Satellite Images – A Qualitative Research Project into the Work of Space-Eye and the Application of Artificial Intelligence for Supporting Sea Rescue Missions
University of Amsterdam,
Bucerius Strat Up Scholarship
SIMON TRUNK
Negotiating Life in between Empires: Debates on the Position, Possibilities and Belonging of Bosnian and Cypriot Muslims in Relation to the Ottoman Empire and Austro-Hungarian and British Rule
Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg,
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
LIN YI-HUI
Untangling China: Everyday Lives and Nation-Making
Utrecht University,
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship
EMINA ZOLETIC
Intergenerational Transmission of the Memory of the War: The Cases of Families in Bosnia-Herzegovina
and the Bosnian Diaspora in Europe
University of Warsaw,
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship
ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius
Feldbrunnenstrasse 56
20148 Hamburg
Germany
Dr. Anna Hofmann • Academic Director
+49 (0) 40 41 336 785
Rosenka Babinets • Project Manager
+49 (0) 40 41 336 770