The Entangled Borderlands project aims to shed light on the interconnected histories of Romanov imperial border regions from 1860–1917 that have been neglected in traditional historical studies. It will do so by examining perceptions, ideas and concepts, and personal experiences of intra-imperial entanglement, as they were visualised on maps, understood intellectually, and experienced in urban spaces.
The aim of the project is to bring to light histories of imperial border regions that have been rendered less visible in mainstream historiographies and explore how we might see these points of encounter as constitutive of the very fabric of the Romanov Empire, rather than just a byproduct.
The project also aspires to interject a Baltic perspective into ongoing discussions about the decolonisation of imperial pasts and methodologically advance approaches for writing more polycentric histories through uncovering these lesser-known horizontal entanglements.
The project is based at the Centre for East European and Eurasian Studies (CEURUS) at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu.
The project is funded by the Estonian Research Council (Grant no. PSG1042) and runs from 2025–2029.
On 13 June, three members of the project – Catherine Gibson, Janet Laidla, and Julia Malitska, together with Teele Saar – organised a roundtable at the Ninth Annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies on “Entangled Borderlands: Intra-Imperial …
On 27–28 May, Catherine Gibson co-organised a workshop at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University’s Institute for Advanced Study, focused on the history of thematic mapping in the Romanov Empire. The event, co-organised with Anton Kotenko (University of …
From 24-26 April 2025, Catherine Gibson participated in the Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe at the University of Cambridge in a roundtable on “(De)colonial Visions: New Perspectives on Ethnographic Imagery and Visual Culture in Baltic Studies.” Her contribution discussed …
