A central challenge facing Europe in recent years has focused around borders, especially relating to border security concerns around unregulated migration, increasing nationalism, the risks of soft or porous borders, and geopolitical shifts, including the impact of Brexit.

Join us for this Sussex Development Lecture with guest speaker Professor Maggie O’Neill, as she shares the latest findings from the innovative research project EuroBorderWalks, which is documenting three borders from ‘below’.

A central aim of the EuroBorderWalks project is to work collaboratively across biographical sociology and arts practice (ethno-mimesis), as well as through three artist commissions, to open up horizons for scholarship, knowledge and understanding that makes a difference, not only in better understanding the problems and challenges associated with the three borders at the edges of the European Union (Polish/Ukraine, Croatia/Bosnia Herzegovina and the Irish Border) and the very meaning, experience and evolution of the three borders, but also to contribute to European policy and education.

Prof O’Neill will discuss the methodology underpinning the research – the importance of the walking interview as biographical method (WIBM), key concepts of borders, bordering and mobility justice, and share some of the early findings specifically in relation to the Irish Border.

The research is conducted by Maggie O’Neill and the wider research team; Agnieszka Golczyńska-Grondas, Krešimir Žažar, Aleksandra Sobańska, Vladimir Ivanović, Conach Gibson-Feinblum, Michael Mcloughlin, John Perivolaris, Tomasz Ferenc and Marek Domanski.

Speaker
Professor Maggie O’Neill, Professor of Sociology & Criminology and Director of the Institute for Social Sciences and Collective Social Futures, University College Cork.

Chair
Professor Máiréad Dunne, Professor of Sociology of Education, University of Sussex.

How to watch
You can attend this event in-person or watch online on Zoom.

Register

Follow this link to register your attendance.

Join us to hear about her research at this Sussex Development Lecture (SDL). The SDL series is an opportunity to hear from leading global thinkers on development. It is jointly run by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), the School of Global Studies, the Science Policy and Research Unit (SPRU) and the Centre for International Education (CIE). 

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By: Eve Wilcox
Last updated: Monday, 9 February 2026