IMAGEUN stands for the French-German research project “In the Mirror of the European Neighbourhood (Policy) : Mapping Macro-Regional Imaginations”. It centrally evolves around the three key terms that appear in the title:

 

• MACRO-REGION: the project inquires how people in different places imagine a possible division of the globe into different world regions and which of those world regions they feel part of;
• IMAGINATION: it is a study on how people imagine the geographical order of the world. It is also interested in the transformation of such imaginations through both representational and discursive as well as material and tangible factors. We seek to understand how people make sense of the world with its connections and divisions;
• EUROPE: the macro-region at the centre of interest to IMAGEUN is Europe and its “neighbourhood”. Our research focusses on how “Europe” is imagined spatially and semantically in different places within the EU and in its “neighbourhood”.

 

Trying to develop a better understanding about what “Europe” means and how it relates to its “neighbours”, our research will be conducted in France and Germany as countries often considered at the “heart of Europe”, in Turkey and Tunisia as key countries in the “European neighbourhood”, as well as in Britain and Ireland whose relationship with each other and with Europe is in a complex process of redefinition in the wake of Brexit.