In this talk, we will explore how approaching landscape as a form of situated knowledge can deepen our understanding of these dynamics in International Relations. Focusing on the Dinaric Karst, a vast region in the Balkan Peninsula stretching roughly from Italy to Albania, the presentation examines how the region’s physicality, including its geomorphology and ecology, and the ways it has been interpreted, shape both the practice and study of international politics.

We will consider two key dimensions. First, how the Dinaric Karst can serve as an archive for writing more global and inter-imperial histories of an area too often reduced to the ethnic parochialism of nation-states. Second, how human-nature relations informed nation-building and ‘race mapping’ in the interwar period.

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