Duration: 2009
Project leader: Silva MEŽNARIĆ
Researcher: Dubravka MLINARIĆ
The project Borders and identity in contemporary South-Eastern Europe: cases of Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BICSEE) was conducted in order to prepare the project documentation for the FP7 application call in 2009. It was focused on multiplicity and overlapping of projects on discourses and geopolitics of borders, identities, and citizenship in South-Eastern Europe: namely Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia. It has also included a variety of presentations of insights, methods, and emerging issues. The research question was confronting two dominant but opposing principles, the “fortress Europe” versus free movements across borders.
This research has been presented at the HERA (Humanities in European Research Area) annual scientific conference in Berlin, organized by the European Council. The main conference topic was the increase of the role of humanities in the European research area, which required a new strategic document of the Europen Commission (“Strategic Research Roadmap”) to be discussed.
The research material enabled the project application to the HERA i European Research Council call with the project idea: Dissolution of Multinational States: Rhetoric of Borders in “New Europe” in Comparative Perspective (NEUBORDERS). The research consortium was, besides the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, composed of partners from Slovenia (Project Leader), Estonia, Sweden, Netherlands, the United Kingdom. The Croatian team gathered 11 institutions, including the Institute’s members Dubravka Mlinarić (Coordinator for Croatia) and Silva Mežnarić (Project Collaborator).