Towards an Aegean Vision: exploring regional cultural identities beyond ethnonational divides

How are regional cultures formed beyond the confines of ethnonational borders? To what extent do identity-building processes depend on the shared environments and historical legacies within a geographical area? I explore these questions through the case of the Aegean, the Eastern Mediterranean sea basin between present-day Greece and Turkey. Despite being the site of recent bilateral political tensions, the Aegean is arguably a cultural region shaped by ecocultural diversity and demographic mobility spanning millennia since Antiquity. My project investigates the complex dimensions of a common regional culture and identity formed through constant intercultural exchange enabled by overlapping waves of migration in the Aegean, past and present. Using ethnographic and historical methodologies, I trace the time-honored trajectories of what I term “Aegean Vision” in diverse aspects of sociocultural life, including environmental practices, culinary traditions, migration patterns, political movements, and literary production. By focusing on these enduring crossborder processes in the Aegean, I seek to develop a globally comparative framework for the critical understanding of how common cultures and identities persist in geographical regions marked by national or ethnic divisions worldwide.