Project background
One blind spot in regional studies is “the people inside the border”: national narratives organise memory around territory, so the experience of cross-border communities — border residents, migrants, seasonal workers — is often absent from the record. These experiences are uniquely valuable for understanding regional change, but collecting them requires long-term trust and local collaboration that short projects cannot sustain.
Objectives
- Record: work with local research institutions to systematically collect oral accounts from cross-border communities, covering migration, livelihoods, kinship networks and disaster response.
- Preserve: build a standardised oral history archive with collection dates, locations and authorisation recorded, respecting interviewees’ privacy and wishes.
- Connect: link oral materials with macro-level regional research so that local experience enters comparative analysis and policy discussion.
Methods and ethics
Oral history collection follows clear ethical standards: informed consent, anonymity protection and unambiguous ownership of usage rights; interviewees have the right to review, amend or withdraw their accounts. Materials are organised under a common metadata standard for long-term preservation and cross-project comparison. Publication of any output requires the interviewee’s authorisation; community rights are not sacrificed for academic convenience.
Current status
The programme is in preparation. The first phase will pilot one or two border communities to validate collection standards and collaboration models before expanding. Partner institutions and pilot sites will be announced separately; interested local partners are welcome to contact us through the contact page.
Sources and version: v1.0 (2026-09).