LIMINAL is a laboratory investigating intersectional (im-)mobilities and border violence. Based in the University of Bologna’s Department of the Arts, it builds on more than ten years of experience in developing pioneering techniques of geospatial, media and open-source investigation in the context of the Forensic Oceanography and Border Forensics project.

We work with communities affected by border violence to document and contest the harm created by unequal mobility regimes across multiple geographies and temporalities, mobilising strategies of spatial and visual analysis and forensic imagination.

Our team is composed of architects, designers, and researchers, and we collaborate with a wide range of partners: from human rights organisations to investigative journalists, from activist groups to autonomous research centres, scientists and cultural institutions. Our work has been used as evidence in courts of law, published across different media and academic outlets, as well as exhibited and screened internationally.

Over the 2022-2027 period, LIMINAL will be focusing primarily on the ERC-funded “Hostile Environments” project, which seeks to unravel the interconnected nature of the so-called migration and environmental crises beyond catastrophist and security-oriented perspectives.