The interdisciplinary winter school Cities, Borders and Identities is a joint initiative of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR), the Huizinga Institute, ACCESS EUROPE, ARTES, and the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam. It explores processes of place-making and identity construction in border cities by bringing together participants from various disciplines, and examining how differing approaches from both humanities and social sciences can shed new light on these questions.

Key questions:

• How do cultural actors, writers and residents, as well as city planners and administrators in border cities engage in the processes of place-making and identity construction? 
• How are histories of border conflict and contact negotiated in concrete spaces and landscapes in the city? 
• Can urban spaces provide sites for the negotiation of difference? 
• How can urban peripheries change over time, and how do people engage with them? 
• How can the processes of negotiation of urban identities hold lessons for wider national and European debates and challenges, such as the shifting of the contours of nationalism, cosmopolitanism and European integration? 
• How can varying approaches from both the humanities and the social sciences shed light on these questions?

Provisional programme:

• Geographies of border cities: Fascist Rome (Prof. dr. Luiza Bialasiewicz (coordinator)
• Urban heritagisation and gentrification (Dr. Chiara de Cesari)
• Hatra and Palmyra: Cultural diversity in Roman border cities Dr. Lucinda Dirven)
• Artistic geographies at Rome’s urban waterfront (Lora Sarıaslan MA)
• Urban literary borders (Dr. Guido Snel)
• Living and dying in Rome’s peripheries: the case of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Prof. Dr. Harald Hendrix).

Teaching method:

Seminars, workshops, site visits, presentations and essay.

Programme assessment:

Participants are requested to prepare an introductory ‘framing’ paper – related to the participant’s own research project or a selected topic that is part of this winter school’s focus. The paper (approx. 6000 words) will be introduced by the participant in a 10 minute presentation during the first day of the winter school. This paper will be elaborated upon during the week, taking into account the feedback from Day 1 as well as the course material and a final draft assessed and discussed at the closing of the winter school.