The Bucovinian Festival of Science as a Laboratory of Dialogue on the Borderland: Intercultural, Intergenerational, and Interdisciplinary Integration

Abstract

This article analyzes the Bucovinian Festival of Science as an innovative model of an intercultural, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary laboratory of dialogue operating in a borderland context. Embedded within the International Folklore Festival Bucovinian Meetings, the Festival of Science seeks to overcome the traditional separation between academia and society by opening scholarly reflection to local communities, festival participants, and artistic groups. The article situates the Festival within the historical and socio-cultural specificity of Bukovina – a region shaped by multiethnicity, multireligiosity, and complex migration processes – highlighting the long-term consequences of wartime displacement, diaspora formation, and post-1989 social transformations in Central Europe. Particular attention is paid to the Festival’s organizational model, characterized by horizontal communication, itinerant events, and the integration of popular-science lectures, film discussions, exhibitions, and participatory formats. The analysis demonstrates how the Festival fosters civic engagement, counters cultural stereotypes, decentralizes cultural and educational activities, and promotes the ideal of homo bucovinensis, understood as an attitude of openness and active engagement in culturally diverse environments. By foregrounding microhistories, personal narratives, and the active involvement of participants as co-creators of knowledge, the Bucovinian Festival of Science emerges as a transnational community of memory and a meaningful tool for social integration and the redefinition of regional identities in contemporary Europe.