Professor Maggie O’Neill – EUROBORDERWALKS

EUROBORDERWALKS is funded by a Research Ireland Advanced Laureate grant and runs from December 2024-2027.

The research contributes to critical border studies and the mobilities field, by conducting ‘bottom up’ research using ethnographic, biographical, relational and arts-based research on three borders and ‘borderities’ (Szary and Giraut 2015) at the edges of the European Union and the very meaning, experience and practice of borders (Riccioni 2025), especially in contributing to European policy and education.

As Sheller (2018) neatly summarises ‘borders are a complex assemblage of people, and things, data and bodies, objects and representations, all of which are put into relative relations of (im)mobility with each other’(p123).

Why this project?

Many of the associated challenges with Europe’s borders, in critical border studies, relate to border security concerns, especially in relation to unregulated migration, increasing nationalism, the risks of soft or porous borders, geopolitical shifts, as well as the impact of the UK exit from the European Union, and war.  An important contribution of this research is to open up horizons for research, knowledge, understanding and teaching and learning, from an ‘ethno-mimetic’[1](O’Neill  and Harindranath 2006, Cantwell 1994)  approach that involves documenting and writing the biography of three borders from ‘below’ and seeks to generate  impact through a policy report, policy briefing, art exhibition and a curriculum contribution to second level education.

What will we do?

The research brings together sociological researchers with artists to critically analyse and understand the shifting and im/mobile borders, the lived experience of borders, the securitisation and policing of borders, and contribute to critical border studies, mobilities and ‘mobility justice’ (Sheller 2018) as well as our collective social futures.

The project uses a combination of ethnographic, biographical /narrative (Golczynska-Grondas 2019)  and arts based research (Domański and Ferenc 2019, Perivolaris 2017 and Mcloughlin  2016)  to contribute to critical border studies and mobility studies by conducting a deep biographical mapping of the Irish Border, the Polish/Ukraine Border and the Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatian Border.  The research team will undertake walking biographical interviews ( O’Neill and Roberts 2019, O’Neill 2024) and arts-based workshops with people who live near, work at or cross the borders.

The arts-based workshops will produce a visual map of each border through three artist commissions and arts workshops that will include visual representations of important landmarks, symbols, memories, stories and soundscapes. We will also conduct comparative analysis of the three borders and the meanings of borders and borderlands, the lived and historical experiences, social and collective memory, for those who live and work on or at the border, and who cross the border. In what ways for example does the Polish/Ukraine border contrast with the other two borders where the most violent processes have ended?

A rigorous ethics of care is at the heart of this project and we are inspired  by the Walk Create project’s  public statement of ethics.

The research uses walking biographical interviews and arts-based workshops where participants share their life stories of living or working in the borderlands and/or their everyday border crossings. Walking biographical interviews will invite people to share the stories of their border lives, by taking a walk, for example an everyday route, to understand feelings or memories related to place, over time and their experience of how the Border looks and is experienced now and in the past?  Arts workshops will explore and create visual and sound representations (including biographical relationships to place and environment) alongside image making and arts practice, such as photography.

Outputs of the research

We seek to generate and share knowledge and understanding through producing the usual research outputs such as a report and publications and  a successful PhD project, but also web based and site based  exhibitions of work (images, maps, soundscapes, pedagogic walks, blogs). An art hack will inform the second level curriculum development, and a policy document will be produced that we hope will be useful to European commissioners and other publics.

Inspired by the research and policy-oriented work undertaken and shared by the Centre for Cross Border Collaboration over the past twenty-six years regarding the ‘collaboration across borders on the island of Ireland, Europe and beyond’ we look forward to sharing our work and contributing in a small way to the work of CCBC.

For more information or to get involved in the research, please contact Maggie at maggie.oneill@ucc.ie

References

Cantwell, R. (1994) Ethnomimesis: folklife and the representation of culture Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

Domański, M.  and Ferenc, T. (2019) Borderlands.Tensions on the External Borders of the European Union. Akademia Sztuk Pięknychim.  Władysława Strzemińskiego w Łodz

Golczynska-Grondas, A. (2019) Biographical interviews with people from social exclusion environments – reflection on selected methodological and ethical problems, Qualitative Sociology Review 15:178-201

Mcloughlin, M. (2016) Cumann, multi-channel spatial audio installation: an audio map of Limerick. Limerick City Gallery of Art, 15 September – 30 October 2016. https://www.limerick.ie/gallery/past-exhibitions/exhibition-archive/2016/michael-mcloughlin-cumann-an-audio-map-of-limerick

O’Neill.M., & Roberts, B. (2019). Walking methods: Research on the move. London: Routledge.

O’Neill, M. (2024). Walking borders, risk and belonging: the walking interview as biographical method and doing mobility justice. Applied Mobilities, 9(2–3), 95–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/23800127.2024.2318065

O’Neill, M., & Harindranath, R. (2006). Theorising narratives of exile and belonging : the importance of Biography and Ethno-mimesis in “understanding” asylum. Qualitative Sociology Review, 2(1), 39–53. https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.2.1.04

Perivolaris, J. (2017) George Delemis, photography and the migrants distant look in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture Vol.8. No 2:215-232

Riccioni, I. (2025) For a Sociology of the Border, Space and Identity in Contemporary Society. Rome:Carocci. ISBN:9788829028429 carocci.it

Sheller, M. (2018) Mobility Justice. The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes London: Verso

Szary, A.L and Giraut, F. (2015). Borderities: The Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders. DOI: 10.1057/9781137468857_1

Žažar, K., 2016. Examining sociology’s position in an increasingly interdisciplinary environment. Družboslovne razprave, 32(83), pp.45-62.

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EUROBORDERWALKS is an inter disciplinary, inter institutional, European research project, anchored in biographical, mobile and arts based methodologies and the leadership and long history of the research team in this area and supported by a wonderful advisory board.

The photograph is of the research team (front row, from left) Dr John Perivolaris (artist/photographer), Dr Aleksandra Sobańska (Postdoctoral researcher, Uni of Lodz), Prof Tomasz Ferenc (Uni of Lodz, Poland), Prof. Katarzyna Waniek (Uni of Lodz, Poland), Principal Investigator Professor Maggie O’Neill (UCC, Ireland), Dr Krešimir Žažar (Zagreb Uni, Croatia) and (back row, from left) Professor Marek Domański (artist, Academy of Fine Arts, Lodz, Poland), Conach Gibson-Feinblum (PhD student, UCC, Ireland), Dr Vladimir Ivanović (postdoctoral researcher, Zagreb Uni, Croatia), Dr Michael Mcloughlin (artist, SETU/UCC) and Professor Agnieszka Golczyńska-Grondas (Uni of Lodz, Poland). Photograph courtesy of Rubén Tapia, AVMS, UCC.

[1] Ethno-mimetic approaches combine social research ethnography, biographical walking interviews and art making, it is a research process and practice.