Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters

BOMOCULT research community stems from the strategic objective of the University of Eastern Finland to provide answers to global challenges through research and it forms the core of the university’s profile area Cultural Encounters, Mobilities, and Borders. It brings together research teams and scholars from the Karelian Institute, the Department of Social Sciences and the School of Historical and Geographical Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, as well as from the School of Humanities and the School of Theology at the Philosophical Faculty.

Our research community performs top-level interdisciplinary and internationally networked scientific research as evidenced in numerous peer-reviewed publications, externally-funded research, interaction with policy stakeholders and civil society organizations, seminars, and an annual conference. Through its research, BOMOCULT provides in-depth knowledge concerning the transformation of socio-cultural phenomena given increasing complexity and accelerating globalization. Its most significant recent research has linked the transformation of contemporary societies with socio-cultural processes of border-making and border-crossing by addressing the three key issues. These key issues are European borders and Russia, mobilities and migration, and cultural and linguistic encounters in their diverse contexts. Our recent research has devised novel ways of understanding the emergence and role of transnational and transcultural phenomena at various levels, extending from the (nation-)state to the everyday, to show the role(s) of borders and crossings in contemporary life.

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