The role and place of borderlands in modern research: a look through the prism of candidate’s dissertations and research projects

The article studies borderlands through a review of dissertations for a Candidate Degree in Economics defended in Russia from the early 2000s to the present. It had been revealed that over almost a quarter of a century only 50 candidate’s dissertations were devoted to the study of borderlands, which were unevenly distributed over the analyzed period. The dynamics of the number of prepared dissertations demonstrates a fading interest in the problem of borderlands. Based on the analysis of the scope of research, we have concluded that a quarter of dissertations don’t cover the topic of borderlands sufficiently. We have also analyzed Russian Science Foundation projects, which demonstrate an increasing interest in borderlands studies, but the share of projects in economic sciences is small. It is concluded that in light of the change in the number of subjects of the Russian Federation and the emergence of new border regions there is a need for new research in this field.