EHESS-UMIFRE-EFA Workshop

Organizers: EHESS, EURETES « Faire société », CEFRES (Prague), CRFJ (Jerusalem), IFA SHS (Frankfurt/Main), EFA (Athenes), University of Cyprus (Nicosia)

Date: April 29–30, 2026
Location: 1 Panepistimiou Avenue, Aglantzia 2109, Cyprus, http://library.ucy.ac.cy
Languages of the workshop: English, French
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2026

Coordination:

• Falk Bretschneider (EHESS / IFRA-SHS)
• Mateusz Chmurski (Sorbonne University / CEFRES)
• Gilles de Rapper (EFA)

Rationale:

Borders are all these things at once: a seam stitching together two neighboring sovereignties; a line of demarcation punctuated by crossing points—par excellence, sites of identity verification—unless one plays with their rigidity to turn them into hinges, places of encounter; a horizon onto which hostility toward the other is projected, and the very edge of the self; a liminal space which therefore, or perhaps, partakes of something sacred. We know how to delimit, trace, adjust, control, and reinforce borders. But do we know how to abolish them, or does a hardened trace always remain? We also know, as in Europe, how to neutralize them, dematerialize them, euphemize them. But what does the wall erected at the border do to it? Whether it is merely one of its varieties or its very essence, what does it say about the border itself?

From the Great Wall of China—an emblematic case of a rampart that defines barbarians more than it protects against them—the world has never known as many walled borders as in the period following the Second World War: The Berlin Wall or the “Iron Curtain” dividing Europe in two; the Cypriot wall; the separation wall between the two Koreas. Today, there is the wall built by the American administration along the border with Mexico, and the wall constructed by the Israeli government along the border with the West Bank—or rather, along a nonexistent and unilateral border that plays upon the very denial of Palestine’s existence. What do these walls do to societies, and how—what diapositives do they constitute? What do we learn from their legal or illicit crossings, and what do the lived reality and the novelistic fantasy of the checkpoint reveal about them? What do walls seek to make difficult, risky, impossible? What kind of border does a wall dream of when it bars the welcome of the other as much as it confines us within? And of what kind of world is it the foundation? What narratives—literary or otherwise—tell the story of walls, and, conversely, how do walls survive in the collective memory, in identities, in behaviors, or in the spatial structures of societies?

Program:

The event will consist of four half-day workshops, each devoted to a group discussion of a concept based on a presentation. In addition, a guided tour of the Cyprus border will be organised. Participants will not be required to give individual presentations; however, they are invited to read one or more texts in preparation for each workshop.

Participants’ travel and accommodation expenses will be covered on a flat-rate basis intended to cover all expenses.

Applications:

Applications consisting of a cover letter (maximum 1 page) and a CV (maximum 2 pages) should be sent to Falk Bretschneider (falk.bretschneider@ehess.fr), Mateusz Chmurski (mateusz.chmurski@cefres.cz) & Xenia von Tippelskirch (X.vonTippelskirch@em.uni-frankfurt.de).