Workshop: "Conceptual History of European Regions and Boundaries"

The project is based on a focus-group investigation, and aims at a joint publication, on an overarching topic: how European transnational historical (meso-) regions had been, and are being, conceptualized and delimitated over time, across different disciplines and academic traditions, in different fields of activity (politics, economy, international order) and national/regional contexts. In its most ambitious scope the aim would be to reconstruct the historical itineraries of the conceptualization of regional frameworks and their frontiers in relation to political, historical, cultural usages or discursive practices: historical-cultural, geopolitical, economic, transnational-organizational, etc. This would also help rethinking the heuristics of interpretative models based on regional patterns.

Detailed description of the project agenda can be found here .

At this first project meeting each member of the research team is expected to present a preliminary sketch of the most interesting turns in the history of conceptualizing the given region(s)

• Eurasia
• Southern Europe
• Mediterranean
• Southeastern Europe/Balkans
• Iberia
• Baltic region
• Scandinavia/Norden
• Eastern Europe
• Central Europe
• Western Europe 

Important issues to be considered are the following:

• main historical turning points of conceptualization (e.g., is there a specific Sattelzeit in the given national/regional or disciplinary tradition?);
• the most important counter-concepts in the given tradition (Central Europe vs. Russia, North vs. South, etc.)
• clusters of concepts: concepts commonly occurring together with the given regional notion, such as Eastern Europe - backwardness, Slavs; Scandinavia - welfare state; etc.
• construction of boundaries and delimitations (discourses of othering through spatialization, or of inclusion and exclusion; metaphors of the bridge or the gate, etc.)
• brief overview of political and institutional contexts and implications of the conceptual tradition (who produces the given conceptualization, what were the stakes).

Deatiled programme will be available soon!