The project studies the long-term formation of regional identities in Northern Europe. It focuses on a case study of the area of the current Baltic States.
It is a particularly fruitful subject for an analysis of the transformations of regional identity, as the region experienced radical transformations of state structures during the past centuries, without losing a sense of common identity in one form or another. The individual parts of the project follow how regional identity was constructed through various ideological devices at the 'sub-national' level within the conglomerate empires, what role this identity played when the nation states were founded in the aftermath of the World War I, how this identity then transformed to a 'supra-national' regional cooperation, to what extent the Baltic political space was preserved during the Soviet occupation and what role perceptions of this region played in Cold War politics. The aim of the project is to contribute both to the historical knowledge of the broader Nordic region and to the theoretical understanding of the formation of states and state-systems.