My project will look at how knowledge is produced, ‘geopolitically scripted’ and transmitted by peace research institute, the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI). The research will take place at the centre in Flensburg, Germany – a key city involved in the Schleswig-Holstein question, the archetypal, unsolvable border dispute of the nineteenth century, in modern day Germany and Denmark. The Schleswig-Holstein case study is seen as a success story, with the 1955 Bonn-Copenhagen Accords providing an inclusive platform on both sides of the Danish-German borderlands for which minorities and others could not be discriminated against based on their national identity. I will look to access the applicability of this case study to other places in Europe, with some fieldwork taking place in Transnistria, accompanying the ECMI on an ongoing project.
