Workshop: UNSETTLING THE VOLATILE AND VOLUMETRIC BORDERLANDS
Tallinn University, May 6, 2026 / Room A-346
The contemporary geopolitical turmoil is generating increasingly tense and volatile borderscapes as states across the world seek to assert control over layers of airspace, militarized seas and extensive terrestrial boundaries. The volumetric turn in border studies has drawn attention to the challenges of imposing linear boundaries across inherently three-dimensional spaces. Scholarship has shown that rather than fixed lines on a map, borders emerge through practices that extend vertically across multiple spatial layers. Yet, there are limits to understanding borderscapes merely through state- or human-centred agency.
This one-day workshop focuses on the multiplicity of actors involved in shaping the material and political practices of territory, particularly as state control is extended across volumes and spatial thickness. Moving beyond conventional approaches that foreground human actors and the abstract state, the workshop turns attention to the diverse range of ‘Others’ that take part in the shaping of territorial governance. By foregrounding non-human and multispecies agencies, the workshop invites contributions that examine how atmospheric forces, marine ecologies, terrains, infrastructures and other material entities, enable, channel, constrain or transform the practices of territorially projected governance. The workshop approaches borderlands as thick, dynamic and volumetric spaces where animals, plants, soils, rocks, sediments, elements, microbes and other entities actively shape the material and political practices of territory, influencing how borders are enacted, negotiated and contested.
We invited presentations that demonstrate how non-human and multispecies agencies emerge, interact with, and transform the practices of territorial governance and bordering. Contributions for the workshop will explore how such agencies influence geopolitical dynamics, reshape territorial governance or challenge established understandings of borders.
WORKSHOP AGENDA
10:30 WELCOME & INTRODUCTIONS
10:45 – 12:15: PANEL 1 Bordering Maritime Volumes / Discussant: Tarmo Pikner
Jellyfish incursions and volumetric reversal at the Thailand-Myanmar sea border
Jiraporn Laocharoenwong, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
Bordering with the Sea: Whales, Volume, and the Wet Life of Territory (ONLINE)
Lola Aubry, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Grenoble Alpes University, CNRS, Sciences-Po Grenoble
12:15 – 13:15 – LUNCH BREAK
13:15 – 15:00: PANEL 2 Bordering Terrain Volumes / Discussant: Rachael Squire
Atmospheric Bordering: Preliminary Ethnographic Notes on High-Altitude Tourism in Tawang
Shubhanginee Singh, Research Fellow, School of Humanities, Tallinn University
The agency of terrain in the social and political lives in the Eastern Himalayas
Karin Dean, Senior researcher, School of Humanities, Tallinn University
Bordering Through Disease: Proximity and Territorial Governance in the Transboundary Alps
Claire Galloni d’Istria, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Geography and Environment, University of Geneva
15:00 – 15:30 – COFFEE BREAK
15:30 – 17:00: PANEL 3 Volumetric Border Rivers / Discussant: Karin Dean
Wilding the border: Reimagining the Finland Russia border through more-than-human agencies
Rachael Squire, Associate Professor in Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Watery Assemblages, Care, and Resource Frontiers in Contested Energyscapes
Tarmo Pikner, Senior researcher, School of Humanities, Tallinn University
