Programme

The seminars are held every Thursday at 6:00 PM (Central European Time) via Jit.si Meet:  click here to register or use the widget above ⬆️

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22 October 2026

Joseph Adamczyk (Lifetime Learning Centre, Seattle, WA, USA)

How Canada did not become the 19th State: America’s Northern Borderlands before and during the War of 1812

29 October 2026 

Agostino Zito (University of Messina, Italy)

Invisible Borders in the Institutional Architecture of the Maltese Archipelago under the Sicilian Shadow

5 November 2026

Scott Doebler (University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA)

The Young Forest: Arboreal Buffer Zones, Indigenous Resilience, and Multispecies Communities in the Eighteenth-Century Maya-Caribbean Borderlands

12 November 2026

Lorenzo Lozzi Gallo (Pegaso University, Naples, Italy)

Sustainability and post-natal abortion in Medieval Iceland

19 November 2026 

Afkir Nawar (Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah, Fez, Morocco / Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania)

Thresholds of Scarcity and Sanctity: Vernacular Ecological Knowledge, Liminal Figures, and Resource Governance in Tamazight Oral Folktales

26 November 2026 

Sritama Maiti and Jenia Mukherje (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India)

‘Speaking with Nature’: Medicinal Legacies and Sustainable Futures at the Calcutta Botanic Garden

3 December 2026

Maria Isabel Lemos (IELT- Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Ecologies of Colonial Labour: Drought, Mobility, and Cacao Production between Cape Verde and São Tomé

10 December 2026

Shu Wan (University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA)

Exclaiming “Long Live Chairman Mao!”: Propagating Acupuncture-Treating-Deafness in Socialist China

17 December 2026 

Nikolai Belov (HSE University Moscow / Independent scholar)

Shared Shrines, Hardening Borders: Greek-Latin Confessional Boundaries in the Kingdom of Jerusalem

18 December 2026 – 6 January 2027   Winter Break

7 January 2027

Lois Stanford (New Mexico State University, USA)

Sustainability in El Rancho: Losing a Cuisine in the US-Mexico Borderlands

14 January 2027

Danila Kashkin (University of Geneva)

A Border Drawn by Drift: How Unsustainable Navigation Made Ogasawara Japanese

21 January 2027 

Nikoleta Zampaki (University of Information Technology and Management - UITM, Poland)

Crossing Lines, Sustaining Worlds: Romani Ecologies Between Border, Literature and Performance in Greece

28 January 2027 

Charlene Vella (University of Malta)

Crossing the Threshold: Processional Banners, Material Survival and the Borders of the Image in Renaissance Sicily

4 February 2027

Chet Van Duzer (University of Rochester / University of Western Australia)

Beyond the Edge: Negotiating Extreme Geography in Medieval and Early Modern Maps

11 February 2027 

Nicholas R. Miller (East Tennessee State University, USA)

Where Borders Break: Rivers and the Making of Multispecies Worlds

18 February 2027

Sabine Moedersheim (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

“Verbrennt de Bode, wo du 'Heimet' nennsch“ (they burn the Land you call 'Home'): Poetry of the Transborder Anti-Nuclear Resistance in the Early German / French / Swiss Environmental Movements

25 February 2027 

Lucia Groe (University of Calabria, Italy)

Beyond Greenwashing: Advancing Sustainability through “Mitakuyeability”, Environmental Memory, and Native Linguistic Ontologies

4 March 2027 

Sreekishen Nair (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA)

Sharing the Painted Landscape: Ritual Almanacs and Civic Stewardship in Late Postclassic Mexico

11 March 2027

Munia Hweidi (Sophia University, Tokyo)

Building the Dam, Drowning the Village: Submerged Borders and Cultural Sustainability in Ishimure Michiko’s "Lake of Heaven"

18 March 2027 

Ayushi Dhawan (Azim Premji University, Bhopal, India)

Waste, Value, and Environmental Risk at the Alang Shipbreaking Yards

23 March 2027 

Aisling Reid and Valentina Surace (Queen’s University Belfast; University of Messina)

A LAND THAT IS NO LAND: Medieval Whale-Islands and Insular Geophilosophy

1 April 2027

Aleksandra Jakubczak (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Technische Universität Berlin)

“We All Have to Eat Kosher”: Ritual Slaughter, Urban Provisioning, and Antisemitism in Interwar Poland

8 April 2027

Tobias Schank (Saarland University, Germany)

Unwriting the Ocean: Seascape Epistemology and the American Imaginary

15 April 2027

Iqbal Akhtar (Florida International University, USA)

Palimpsests of Pluralism: Material Sustainability in Jain, Jewish, and Muslim Manuscript Cultures of Sindh and Gujarat

22 April 2027 

Dalal Kassab-Kodissieh

AHTTEP ENSA Paris-La Villette

Entangled Frontiers and Resource Conflicts: Land, Water, and Offshore Energy in the Lebanon-Israel-Palestine Borderland (Antiquity-Present)

29 April 2027

Marusca Francini (University of Pavia, Italy)

Heaven and Earth: A Gothic ‘Heaven Above’? Gothic Ufarhiminakunds and its West and North Germanic Cognates

6 May 2027

Tatiana Sitchinava (Institute of Demography and Sociology, Ilia State University, Georgia)

Therapeutic Borderlands: Mineral Waters, Imperial Balneology, and the Sustainable Body in Georgia, c. 1870-1930

13 May 2027

Lydia Letsch (Austrian Institute for International Affairs - OIIP)

Caring under Precarious Conditions: Human-Environment Relations and Border Life in the Oasis of Figuig

20 May 2027

Elisa Ramazzina (Queen’s University Belfast)

Flickering Lights, Fire in the Sky: Apocalyptic Imaginaries, Borders, and Sustainability in Early Medieval Literature

27 May 2027

Jennifer A. Miller (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, USA)

The Unsustainable Borders of Nuclear Power in German Memory

3 June 2027

Anju Nofarof Hasudungan, R. Tuty Nur Mutia, and Zeffry Alkatiri (Universitas Indonesia)

Akit Indigenous Knowledge as Social-Ecological Infrastructure: Mangrove Conservation for Resilient Border Islands between Indonesia and Malaysia

10 June 2027

Betsey Price (Glendon College, York University, Toronto)

The Mansions of the Visigoths: Self-Sustainability Through Boundaries

17 June 2027

Eduardo de Melo Salgueiro (Federal University of Southern and Southeastern Pará, Brazil)

Jaborandi Exploitation, Unfree Labour, and Contested Sustainability in the Brazilian Amazon

24 June 2027

Hristo Hristozov (University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria) 

Criss-Crossing Ecological Borders: Pastoral Mobility and the Socio-Natural Transformation of the Ottoman Balkans, 15th-17th Centuries