As a person who mostly has lived in large cities and political ‘centers’, I have long found it fascinating to learn and understand how people in border regions, which have traditionally been seen as more peripheral areas, cope with their location. Initially imagining these positions as somehow disadvantageous, I soon learned that many borderlanders actually deploy a wide range of creative strategies to make sense of, and even to take advantage of, these locations. I also realized that there is a lot to learn from Border studies on the various ways in which people relate to difference and diversity, and not just in borderlands. Moreover, living in a country and region where, for different reasons and in different ways, the question of borders takes center stage, I was motivated to join B-SHAPES to research these issues in the context of the Slovak-Hungarian borderland.