Conflict and Accommodation in the Global Borderlands

Project Summary

The Borderlands project brought together faculty and graduate students from Archaeology, Sociocultural Anthropology, History, and Religious Studies to examine the forces that lead to peace or conflict among cultural or ethnic groups in regions without strong state control (“borderlands”). Their goal was to add to the academic understanding of this problem in a variety of ancient and modern contexts, and to provide undergraduates with hands-on experience in performing research using methods from the social sciences and humanities. The group pursued these goals by reading broadly to develop a shared interdisciplinary understanding of the subject, followed by developing individual research projects related to the broader theme. From that foundation, the group created and taught new courses that introduced borderlands theory to undergraduates majoring in each of the participating disciplines.

Faculty Investigators: James F. Brooks (History, Anthropology), Beth Digeser (History), Mary Hancock (History, Anthropology),  Stuart Tyson Smith (Anthropology), Greg Wilson (Anthropology)

Fellows: Dana Bardolph (Anthropology), Greg Goalwin (Sociology), Steven Hu (Religious Studies),  Lauren Smith (Anthropology), William Thompson (History), Kali Yamboliev (History)

Graduate Students: Victoria Ballmes (Religious Studies), Yanitsa Buendia de Llaca (Religious Studies),  Justin Devris (History), Maria Fernanda Escallon (Anthropology: Stanford), Shannon Gilmore (History), Patricia Morland (History), Travis Seifman (History), Pablo Sepulveda-Diaz (Anthropology), Peninah Wolpo (History), Eun-Joo Ahn (History), Mariel Aquino (History), Christopher McQuilken (History), Rana Razek (History), Dan Seigel (History)