Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the generous support of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my larger project entitled Borderscapes: The de/construction of borders as an everyday practice (AH/Y003977/1) through a Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship scheme.

This monograph is the main academic output of the project and would not have been possible without the fundamental contribution of numerous research participants who gave their time to fill in questionnaires, participate in discussions, provide advice and feedback, and engage in illuminating conversations. While preserving their anonymity, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to them all.

Multiple contacts enabled me to create this network of participants, and I thank in particular: Carla Peirolero, Suq Genova and Semi Foresti; Daniel Fusinaz of Guichet Linguistique of Aosta and Christiane Dunoyer of the Centre d’Etudes francoprovençales “René Willien”; Daniela Klanjscek of the Centro Bratuz, Devan Jagodič and Maja Mezgec of SLORI, and Miran Košuta of the University of Trieste; Anna Maria Plaisant, Valeria Spanu, Nina Barca, Gesuina Soro, Speranza Canu, Antonimaria Pala, Carlo Manca, Chiara Addis, Elisabetta Pitzurra and Matteo Spezzigu; Verena Platzgummer of EURAC and Agate Oberrauch; Daniela Bovadan and Nadia Chiocchetti of Istitut Cultural Ladin.

I am very grateful to Isja Conen, the Acquisitions Editor at John Benjamins, for her invaluable support and efficiency during the completion and publication of the monograph, and to the anonymous reviewers who wrote generous endorsements of the manuscript.

Many thanks to my colleagues in Italian at Liverpool University Rosalba Biasini, Marco Paoli, Barbara Spadaro and Federica Sturani for their friendship and support, and to Robert Blackwood, long-term colleague and friend (and an honorary member of the Liverpool Italian gang!), for all the insightful chats about the monograph over coffee and lunch. I am very grateful to Jessica Hampton, the PDRA on the wider Borderscapes project, for her unfaltering enthusiasm and dedication, and for being a constant source of inspiration.

My eternal gratitude goes to John, my husband and life companion, for his patience, unwavering support and interest towards what I research, and because simply trying to explain to him what it is that I am thinking, magically makes everything clear to me.

I dedicate this monograph to my beloved siblings. To Anna, for her generosity and contagious curiosity; to Fabio, for his compassion and inexhaustible wit; and to Roberta, for her warmth and inimitable eloquence.