We launched our website transregionalhistory.eu at the Renaissance Society of America in New York City last week! It was the largest edition of their annual meetings so far, with a significant participation of European scholars, turning the experience into a true transatlantic adventure. A small but significant part of the papers paid tribute to the ‘transnational turn’ in the humanities: chiefly literary scholars seized upon the concept to map the adaptation and circulation of texts cross national boundaries in early modern times. Here, the concepts of ‘transnational history’ proved useful to approach literary and intellectual history alike, thinking outside the box of borders. Only three sessions were specifically devoted to transregional movements in a social and political perspective. They all focused specifically borders and borderlands, discussing the fate of the Polish-Lithuanian monarchy, the Holy Roman Empire and the Low Countries. These sessions inaugurated a more critical approach to crossborder circulation, showing in fact how people in early modern Europe might have crossed borders constantly, but also stuck to them in order to defend their own power or profit. It is the study of this interplay between the crossing of borders and the erection of barriers that we pursue in our research group at KU Leuven. To be continued (on our website)…