"Borderland Stories" wins Saarland State Award for University Teaching 2022

On Wednesday, March 22, 2023, the project "Borderland Stories," which was launched in 2021, was awarded with the Saarland State Prize for University Teaching 2022. 

"The goal was to bring students from the Greater Region together with students from Ukraine and have them engage in a dialogue about life in their respective borderlands." said UniGR-CBS member Astrid M. Fellner.

The UniGR Center for Border Studies and the University of the Greater Region spoke with the project team. 

How did the cooperation between Saarland University (UdS) and Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University in Mykolayiv (PMBSNU) come about?

The cooperation with Mykolayiv and especially with Prof. Oleksandr Pronkevych and Dr. Alina Mozolevska, both of whom also received awards here, goes back for many years. The two institutions were already engaged in regular exchanges before the pandemic. I had cooperated with Mykolayiv already since 2014 in the framework of the DAAD Eastern Partnership, first in the field of Popular Cultures and since 2017 in the field of Border Studies. We had visited each other, held guest lectures, hosted joint workshops and conferences. Eva Nossem, Bärbel Schlimbach and I had been to Ukraine several times and had worked very closely with colleagues there. In winter term 21/22 we taught together with Dr. Oksana Starshova an "Introduction to Cultural Border Studies" at the University in Mykolajiw.

Prof. Pronkevych, who had been Dean at PMBSNU for many years, finally approached us in spring 2021 with the idea of jointly organizing a virtual media school, for which Eva Nossem and I quickly had to find a team of experts. With the funding program "MEET UP! Youth for Partnership" of the EVZ Foundation, we were also able to win a generous partner to finance the project.

 

Tobias Schank, you are one of the project coordinators of "Borderland Stories": What were the goals of this multimedia project?

First of all, it was important to us to bring students from both universities together and to offer them a safe place to exchange experiences about border spaces, as this was also to be the thematic basis for the subsequent multimedia projects. We wanted to leave the choice of topics entirely open to the students. The sensitization for the experiences of the fellow students and thus the training of intercultural communication among the students was definitely in the focus.

Starting with a first round of getting to know each other, our expert team of lecturers and creatives gave introductory lectures and intensive master classes to ensure that the students were prepared - both academically and in terms of technical know-how in the creation of multimedia products - and could work together independently and in a self-organized way.

When we realized what great projects the students were developing together, we did everything we could to give them the greatest possible visibility outside the university (for example, at the project presentation at MUDAM Luxembourg as part of the symposium "Riverine Borders" on May 20, 2022), which naturally took on a terrible, unexpected new urgency with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the meantime, Borderland Stories has also become an artifact: for intercultural cooperation, solidarity and creative, scientific, but above all real-life exchange across borders (beyond), and building bridges in times of crisis.

 

How was the project implemented and what are the results? 

Borderland Stories was mainly conducted in the virtual classroom, i.e. online. The introductory lectures, the master classes as well as the group work and consultation sessions with the experts took place via video conference. The teaching-learning platform OLAT was used for online communication with and between the students.

In addition, some students took advantage of the opportunity to meet in person and traveled long distances to do so. These trips could be paid thanks to DAAD Eastern Partnership funds and the EVZ Foundation.

The students then worked on a topic of their own choice in their small groups, most of which were made up of representatives from both universities. The objective was to conduct scientific research and formulate results, but to combine them into a creative multimedia product, present them, and then embed them in a so-called long read - a journalistic format that combines conventional text with multimedia elements to generate a more immersive reading experience. 

A total of ten multimedia products by the students were then collected and linked on the borderland.online website, where the overall Borderland Stories project is also presented.

On the one hand, the students' works are testimony to the commitment of young people to work together across borders, to position themselves politically and to show solidarity with the experiences of others. On the other hand, they give evidence of an enormous cultural diversity, which is particularly visible in peripheral border areas, where aspects of daily life that are difficult to grasp but have a strong impact and create identity rub up against the often-rigid separation regime of nation-state border demarcations. This friction releases a creative energy that becomes visible in a variety of colors through the many prisms of the students' works.

 

What was the challenge that needed to be faced? 

The biggest challenge came after the official end of the project due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as it became increasingly difficult and costly to administer the website managed by the Ukrainian colleagues and thus to keep the student work available in the long term.

 

Jessica Nouguier participated in the project: What added value did this exchange gave you?

Thanks to the intensive group work in the seminar, there is continued contact between us seminar participants beyond the end of the course. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this has ensured, among other things, that UdS students have taken in their Ukrainian team members or provided help in finding accommodation in Saarbrücken. Until today we students are in contact with each other, some of the Ukrainian students are already regularly enrolled as Erasmus students at the UdS and are now continuing their studies in Germany. The seminar thus led to unique human encounters and new friendships.

In addition, the seminar also had personal added value: The intercultural cooperation within the project also creates sustainable new perspectives and visions on the world and imparts important competencies and contributes to the identity construction and critical reflection of the participants.

Website of the project « Borderland Stories »: https://www.borderland.online/
 

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