SOCIOBORD Closing Conference

• Department of History

The SOCIOBORD Closing Conference offers a unique opportunity to reflect on how borders and welfare systems have shaped people's lives across twentieth-century Europe.

The ERC-funded SOCIOBORD project explores the relationship between social welfare and the politics of borders in European borderlands from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th. Bringing together scholars working on the Upper Adriatic, Galician, and Franco-Belgian-Luxembourgish borderlands, the project examines how welfare systems, social policies, and public institutions have been shaped by shifting political regimes, territorial transformations, and transnational exchanges in borderland regions. It also analyzes the ways that welfare institutions have influenced bordering processes, by marking borders and even pushing their boundaries in the name of humanitarian action. Our research contributes to a broader understanding of how mixed economies of bor.derland welfare emerged and evolved, challenging nation-centred approaches to the history of welfare and social citizenship.

The conference will also feature three keynote lectures by distinguished scholars:

Marta Verginella (University of Ljubljana), Female Teachers during Regime Change: The Case of the Northern Adriatic in the 20th Century;

Efi Avdela (University of Crete), Mixed Economies of Welfare in a Borderland Country: Forms of Public Sociality in Twentieth-Century Greece;

Pamela Ballinger (University of Michigan), Borderland Ecologies, National Science? Marine Science as Contested Adriatic Cultural Heritage.