Law & Borders
Research Network
About the Network
Drawing on our backgrounds in law and border studies, our project begins with the observation that law does not only draw borders on paper. It shapes and regulates them, creating thresholds that complicate the lives of those who cross or live alongside them. Borders, in this sense, are not static lines but shifting legal constructs that affect who may move, under what conditions, and with what consequences.
The Law & Borders Network Concept Paper by the speakers Dr. Marie Beyrich and Dr. Mélanie Sadozai is published in a tab below.
The Research Network is part of the Leibniz ScienceCampus' efforts to support innovative, multidisciplinary early career research.
Find out more about the network at the opening event on Thursday, 11 June 2026 from 16:00-20:00 in Room 319 at the Altes Finanzamt / IOS, Landshuter Str. 4, in Regensburg. Click the activities tab below for the programme or download the poster or programme flyer here.
The opening event is co-financed by the UR Law Faculty and the Equal Opportunities Office.
Law & Borders
Launching an Early Career Researcher Network
By Dr. Marie Beyrich & Dr. Mélanie Sadozaï
Why We Begin with Law
Drawing on our backgrounds in law and border studies, our project begins with the observation that law does not only draw borders on paper. It shapes and regulates them, creating thresholds that complicate the lives of those who cross or live alongside them.
Borders, in this sense, are not static lines but shifting legal constructs that affect who may move, under what conditions, and with what consequences. They are also felt in everyday realities – in access to welfare or the labour market, in visa rules enforced at airports or embassies, or in the quiet persistence of “bordering” or “rebordering” in contested regions.
From Lines on Paper to Everyday Realities
Traditionally, borders have been understood as political markers. However, critical border scholars have challenged this approach, drawing attention to borders’ lived dimensions. Nevertheless, this scholarship has only partially explored how legal frameworks set the conditions for who may cross, under which circumstances, and with what rights.
In our work, we take law as the starting point of everyday life. Borders matter for people: they take shape in regular encounters, in access to work or welfare, and in local memories of past divisions.
Geography, politics, and culture continue to play a crucial role, but law now often provides the decisive framework through which these other factors are channelled and made tangible.
Our Approach: Border Labs
To study these dynamics, we are establishing an international early career research network, funded through the Leibniz ScienceCampus Europe and America in the Modern World.
Our core method is the Border Lab. This involves immersive, field-based encounters in regions where law, politics, and everyday life collide in distinctive ways.
Focus Areas
Bavarian / Bohemian Border
From Iron Curtain to Schengen
This border illustrates the transition from alienation constructed by militarised closure to an integrated cross-border space – albeit one that remains vulnerable to disruption and processes of rebordering, for instance during pandemics or due to political contingencies.
The Channel Islands
As Crown Dependencies between the UK and France, the Channel Islands highlight legal entanglements in maritime boundaries, fishing rights, and immigration.
Georgia – Abkhazia
This contested de facto border shows how legal claims, international recognition, and lived realities interact under conditions of “borderization”.
The project deliberately addresses diverse sites. Each allows us to explore how borders are constituted in practice, and how law both structures and unsettles them.
Interdisciplinary and Collaborative
The network brings together doctoral and postdoctoral researchers from Germany, France, the UK, and Belgium.
Beyond legal analysis, we combine methods and perspectives from:
- Political science
- Geography
- History
Critical border studies, ethnographic fieldwork, and discourse analysis enrich our starting point in law, ensuring that borders are not only studied as legal abstractions but also as lived spaces, narrated experiences, and visualised realities.
This interdisciplinary mix allows us to capture how legal frameworks interact with historical, political, social, and economic forces in shaping the meaning and practice of borders.
Outputs and Trajectories
The project will unfold between 2026 and 2028 with:
- Opening and closing events in Regensburg to frame and present our work
- Three Border Labs across Europe and the Caucasus
- A public exhibition translating findings into accessible visual formats
- A special journal issue to anchor the research academically
Longer term, we plan to establish a Border Lab at the University of Regensburg as a permanent hub for interdisciplinary border research and teaching.
Looking Ahead
The Law and Borders Network is both a research agenda and a collaborative experiment.
By grounding legal analysis in interdisciplinary dialogue and fieldwork, we hope to capture the evolving, uneven, and deeply human realities of borders.
Our presentation in Exeter was only the starting point. Over the coming years, through our network and Border Labs, we aim to continue these conversations:
- Across disciplines
- Across borders
- With communities for whom borders are not abstract lines, but lived realities
Contact
If you are interested in our work, would like to get involved in the network, or have contacts, suggestions, or knowledge that could enrich our project, we would be delighted to hear from you:
| Name | Affiliation | Expertise |
| Network Speakers | ||
| Dr Marie Beyrich | UR, Law Faculty | Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Public Law and Politics at the University of Regensburg. She studied law in Regensburg, passing her First State Examination in 2018 and her Second State Examination in 2020. During her studies, she was actively involved in the Refugee Law Clinic and worked at the Chair of Public Law and Politics, where she has been engaged in research and teaching since 2015. She completed her doctoral studies in early 2024. In her habilitation project, Marie Beyrich examines so-called foreign agent laws and their significance for democratic processes of opinion formation. Another key focus of her research lies in European law, particularly in matters of the rule of law, European integration, as well as debates on institutional reform and enlargement.
|
| Dr Mélanie Sadozaï | UR, DIMAS | Dr Mélanie Sadozaï joined DIMAS in February 2024 as a postdoctoral research associate. Prior to this position, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at George Washington University (2022–2023), and a George F. Kennan Fellow at the Wilson Center (2023). Dr Sadozaï earned her PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO/Sorbonne Paris Cité). Her current research, supported by the Small Grants Scheme 2024 from the Delta on the Move Foundation, investigates cross-border relations under disrupted political conditions, with a focus on exchanges between Central Asia and Afghanistan under Taliban rule through the examples of cross-border markets and Special Economic Zones.
|
| Members | ||
| Dr Ariane Bachelet | University Paris 1, France | An associated Researcher at the Research Centre for the Organisation and Dissemination of Geographical Information (PRODIG) in Paris. She holds a PhD in Political Geography from the University of Panthéon-Sorbonne. For more than seven years, she studied border issues in the specific cases of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two disputed political entities located in the South Caucasus between Georgia (de jure sovereignty) and Russia (providing military protection, among other things).
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| Karst Berkenbosch | University of Leuven, Belgium | A doctoral researcher at the Division of Geography and Tourism. His PhD project is entitled “Bottom-up geopolitics: Everyday geopolitics during the Channel Islands fishing row (2022-2026)" and looks at the everyday struggles of actors of the fishing industry near the British Channel Islands who constantly cross multiple borders (administrative, cultural, maritime). His empirically-grounded approach contributes to critical geopolitics to surpass the conventional macro views of the field silencing localized realities.
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| Felix Bruckner | UR, Zentrum Erinnerungskultur (ZE) | A public historian working as a research associate at the Center for Commemorative Culture (ZE) at the University of Regensburg. He studied German-French Studies (B.A.) and Public History and Culture (M.A.) in Regensburg and Clermont-Ferrand.
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Queen Mary University, London, UK | PhD Student in Law. Her research is at the crossroads of ethnographic and legal studies and is titled "The International Legal Protection Offered to People Crossing Borders Due to Climate Change and the Case of Salvadoran Migrants." This research is aimed at proposing changes to the existing legal protections, ensuring those crossing borders as a result of climate change are protected.
| |
| Radboud University, Netherlands | A doctoral researcher in Geography and lso a member of the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research there. She studies the European external border and Migration regime unfolding through the Greek case. She is also a member of the project “Constructing the Limes: Employing citizen science to understand borders and border systems from the Roman period until today."
| |
| Maynooth University, Ireland | A postdoctoral researcher on the IRC funded project, 'CONSPACE: Penal Nationalism and the Northern Ireland Border', led by Dr. Lynsey Black. Her research within the project explores how the border on the island of Ireland is enforced, focusing on the impact of bordering practices on migrants, including asylum seekers, and refugees.
| |
| Luuk Winkelmolen | Radboud University, Netherlands | A doctoral researcher in Geography and a member of the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research there. His research focuses on chronopolitics and the way borders are portrayed in political narratives, and more particularly how politicians manipulate past events in their discourses about borders. He is part of the project “Constructing the Limes: Employing citizen science to understand borders and border systems from the Roman period until today."
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Upcoming Events
The Opening of the Research Network
Thursday, 11 June from 16:00-20:00 in Room 319 at IOS, Landshuter Str. 4, Regensburg. All are welcome to attend.
- download the poster or programme flyer
Schedule:
16:15 – 16:30
Introductory Remarks by the Network Speakers: Dr. Mélanie Sadozaï and Dr. Marie Beyrich
16:30 – 17:15
Keynote talk
Between Monad and Nomad: Law, Bordering, and Lines of Flight by Prof. Dr. Henk van Houtum (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
17:30 – 17:45
“Watch the Border”: Visual Quiz and Instinctive Takes on Border Questions from the Audience
Presented by Jorie Horsthuis & Dr. Mélanie Sadozaï
17:45 – 18:45
Expert Panel
What do Law and Border Studies Have to Say?
Featuring Prof. Dr. Tobias Eule (Bern), Prof. Dr. Henk van Houtum (Nijmegen), Jorie Horsthuis (Amsterdam)
Chaired by Prof. Dr. Alexander Graser (UR)
19:00 – 19:30
Everyday Border Experiences: Students and Audience in Conversation with our Experts
Chaired by Dr. Mélanie Sadozaï
19:30 – 19:45
Closing Input: How do we Report on Borders?
By Jorie Horsthuis
19:45 – 20:00
Final Remarks
Dr. Mélanie Sadozaï and Dr. Marie Beyrich
The Co-Speakers
For enquiries about the research network's activities, please contact the speakers via their UR addresses.
For general enquiries about the Leibniz ScienceCampus please write to campus@europeamerica.de.