Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION

Viadrina Center

B/ORDERS IN MOTION

Profiles

The Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION is a Central Scientific Institution of the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder).

Borders aim to establish or maintain orders, be they specified in law, handed down through history, or expressed through symbols. Orders, in turn, cannot exist in the absence of border demarcations, whether in the form of lines on a map or as patterns for differentiation in people’s minds. The understanding that borders and orders must always be conceived of in dynamic interrelationships guides the work of the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION. It initiates and bundles analyses concerning these interrelationships in the social, cultural, economic, and legal sciences.

European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

Postal address: Große Scharrnstraße 59, 15230 Frankfurt (Oder)
Scientific Manager: Dr Andrea Meissner
+49 (0) 335 5534 2880
meissner@europa-uni.de
Viadrina Media Portal

Visitor address: Große Scharrnstraße 23a, D-15230 Frankfurt (Oder), Floor 4

Current events

Oct

Wednesday 16.15

Melanie Griffiths: ‘Deportable Fathers and Families: The Long-Term Effects of Immigration Status Insecurity’ [EN]

Lecture Series: FORCED MIGRATION, online

News from the Center

Lecture Series: FORCED MIGRATION, winter term 2026/27

The lecture series is organised by the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION and brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on forced migration, borders, asylum and the reception of refugees. It examines how experiences of displacement are shaped by immigration and asylum regimes, legal insecurity, racialisation, gendered and intersectional inequalities, and changing infrastructures of border control and reception.

07. September 2026

DFG approves the scientific network ‘Un/Certain Borders’

We are delighted to announce that the DFG network ‘Un/Gewisse Grenzen’ has been successfully approved. From the end of this year, an interdisciplinary working group comprising 15 researchers will spend three years conducting joint research into the relationship between borders and uncertainty.

27. August 2026

New publication: 2nd anthology on ‘Border Complexities’

Spatialities, Temporalities and Materialities of Border Complexities, edited by Falk Bretschneider, Sylvie Grimm-Hamen, Hedwig Wagner, Carolin Leutloff-Grandits and Christian Wille. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1st edition 2026, 292 pages. (Border Studies. Cultures, Spaces, Orders, Vol. 13). ISBN 978-3-8487-7827-0. Also available as an e-book.

24. June 2026

Visit by a group of diplomats from IPD 16 to the Center

On May 13, 2025, the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION welcomed a group of 25 diplomats from the Federal Foreign Office’s “16th International Diplomats Programme” (IDP16).

27. May 2026

All news

Research | Teaching | Transfer

Research

The insight that borders and orders are inextricably linked guides the work of the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION and is encapsulated in the term “B/ORDERS”. We do not regard borders and orders as being natural and given, but as the result of social practice and the creation of meaning, which is in constant change, “in the making”, “IN MOTION”. Our multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach is designed to capture border and order configurations in their dynamics. In doing so, we focus on the subject areas “borders & boundaries” (understood not only in a territorial, but also in a social and temporal sense) and “migration” as an area defined by multiple border settings and border crossings.

Teaching

The Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION attaches great importance to research-based teaching and innovative formats. We view borders as laboratories in which social developments condense and which shape migration. This enables new perspectives on the transformation of cultural, social, economic, legal and state orders. Our courses are designed for BA and MA students as well as doctoral candidates and are offered in German and English.

Transfer

Borders and migration are topics of particular social relevance. As a research institution situated in close proximity to the German-Polish border, we see ourselves as bearing a special responsibility to provide science-based findings for addressing the challenges we face today. We present our research approaches and results in the “Research Factory” series of events and in various publication formats and we seek to engage with the interested public. We collaborate with civil society and public organizations to make our expertise relevant in practice.