Despite the many forces for economic and political unification in the post-national era, the demarcation, relocation, deconstruction and passage across geographic borders shape contemporary national subjectivities and their constitutive spaces. Recent research has recognised the intensification of political subjectivities at the nation’s (purported) periphery, its impact on marginalised subjects and the traumatic inscription of border crossings on the bodies of the politically disenfranchised. The border has prompted many intellectual positions such as ‘Border as Method’ and ‘Border Thinking’ which identify the critical and epistemological significance of the periphery. It has produced interdisciplinary academic scholarship on physical border lands, immigrant mobilities, and human security. This symposium builds on an ongoing intellectual exploration of borders in theory and in practice that have prompted a number of events. They include an IAG panel (2014), a proposed issue of Fabrications 25:3 (2015), and a future book project.

The planned symposium includes individual presentations from a number of scholars, including postgraduate students. It is followed by a creative practice workshop run by architect/artist/poet, Alex Selenitsch, who will test their research methodologies through his project for a Liminal House.

This event is part of an ARC research project: Temporal Cities, Provisional Citizens: Architectures of Internment led by A/Prof. Anoma Pieris of the Melbourne School of Design.