Borderscapes Inside Out: New Transdisciplinary Methodological Horizons for Critical Border Studies

In critical border studies, interdisciplinary approaches are often stressed as pivotal analytical perspectives for obtaining a comprehensive understanding of borderscaping dynamics. However, the substantial contributions in this direction made by social sciences, humanities, and border studies are often limited to a theoretical and conceptual layer. The increasingly mobile, de/re/territorialized, and processual dimensions of contemporary borders require an additional step. We are still lacking adequate transdisciplinary methodological instruments to operationalize our theoretical knowledge of the complexity of b/ordering processes. What functional tactics could be used to address this necessity? This article suggests that (re)conceiving the border not only as a subject but also as a transdisciplinary method is the epistemic frame through which to answer this question. Specifically, we discuss the design of our participatory action-research within the BorderArt(E)Scapes project as a tool for developing new applied transdisciplinary research methodologies that enhance the dialogue between anthropological, artistic, art-historical, and educational perspectives.