Hynek Böhm comes from the Czech-Slovak-Polish borderlands. Before joining academia, he has been professionally active in the field of cross-border co-operation (CBC) during most of his professional career. After having worked for European Commission and Czech public administration he worked for the NGO Institut EuroSchola, which is a think-tank focused on cross-border co-operation on Czech-Polish-Slovak borders. After starting reading both academic and non-academic papers on CBC, Hynek realized that he made quite a lot of mistakes during his "practitioners" part of his career. This is why he was eager to join the B-SHAPES project and research team, as it should help him to avoid making mistakes coming from the lacking knowledge.