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Borders Shaping Perceptions of European Societies (B-SHAPES)

About the project

Borders Shaping Perceptions of European Societies (B-SHAPES) - https://www.sdu.dk/en/forskning/forskningsenheder/samf/b-shapes - is a Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action analyzing and assessing how borders still are a key factor of how we understand societies. Nine European universities, one research institute, a national museum, a foundation, a political association, a consultancy, and an art collective have come together for three years. In cooperation with Europeans living in border regions, we will examine the role of borders under three lenses:

1. Euroscepticism in border regions,
2. minorities in border regions, and
3. border landscapes as heritage.


The special border region focus promises new insights on how borders shape perceptions of societies, but also how the story of borders can be narrated differently than from a purely national perspective. B-SHAPES is a part of the European Union’s research program Horizon Europe and is coordinated by the Centre of Border Region Studies at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). The Technical University of Liberec, concretely the Department of Geography, is one of the partners. 

Hynek Böhm - Bio

Hynek Böhm is a B-SHAPES consortium participant representing our university. Hynek comes from the Czech-Slovak-Polish borderlands. Before joining academia, he has been professionally active in the field of cross-border co-operation (CBC) for most of his professional career. After having worked for the European Commission and Czech public administration he worked for the NGO Institut EuroSchola, which is a think-tank focused on cross-border co-operation on Czech-Polish-Slovak borders.


After starting to read both academic and non-academic papers on CBC, Hynek realised that he made quite a lot of mistakes during his "practitioners" part of his career. This is why he was eager to join the B-SHAPES project and research team, as it should help him to avoid making mistakes coming from the lack of knowledge.