Borders and Dialogue - our students at workshop in Broumov

Students from Public Communication (Faculty of Philology) took part in the international project Borders and Dialogue implemented by the University of Opole and the University of Hradec-Kralove within the framework of the Visegrad grant. The project comprises a series of workshops on borderlands and dialogue between cultures.  The project is carried out on the Czech part by the Chair of Cultural and Religious Studies and on the UO part by the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Social Spaces and Artistic Projects.

Within the project, students work in the field with the construct of the border in different dimensions, but the basic points of reference are identities: Czech and Polish, and the material heritage and historical memory of Germans connected with the Sudetenland and Silesia.  The students, together with their lecturers, spent a few days (4 - 7 October 2021) in the monastery in Broumov, attending lectures, working in the field, having discussions, watching films (e.g. Agnieszka Holland's 'Pokot', based on Olga Tokarczuk's novel, which was filmed in the Sudetes) and writing reports from the field.  Their work will result in a poster exhibition.  The workshop was also attended by the UO sociology students and interns at the Social Spaces Laboratory from Iran and Spain, doing their internships as part of the Erasmus+ programme, as well as the new English Teaching Assistant from the Fulbright Foundation, Dr Sarah Jasmine Stork. At the end of the meeting, the students planted trees on both sides of the Polish-Czech border in Radków-Kłodzko - Studena Voda to commemorate the meeting. Students from the Mikołaj Kopernik school complex in Radków also took part in this activity.

The next round of workshops will take place in Moszna next spring.  The project is coordinated by Dr. Luděk Jirka from Hradec-Kralove University and by Dr. Michal Wanke from the UO. Also working with students in Broumov were Prof. Tomáš Petráček, Dr. Petr Macek, Dr. David Bouma, Dr. František Burda, Dr. Jana Karlová and Marcin Deutschmann.  Most of the students participating in the project belong to the seminar group Public Spaces and Private Narratives. Humans and their Symbolic Boundaries.