Out there and in here: studying Eastern Europe in the West

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the challenge of studying geographies of Eastern Europe in Western Europe. It reflects on the growing relationships – imagined and material – between Eastern and Western Europe and engages in contemporary debates over ‘relational geographies’ to make a case for geographies which imagine our plural, European spatial connections, which connect different parts of the continent and which encourage the re‐examination and renegotiation of ideas across East and West in the post‐Cold War world. In these ways, the paper borrows from postcolonial frameworks and the ongoing reassessment of area studies to call for studies of Eastern and Western Europe which reinvigorate our "sense of Europe".