Throughout history alliances have taken many different forms and they have been difficult to
understand in their totality. As we now experience an unprecedented pandemic which highlights
the need for both external alliances between states and internal alliances between governments
and populations understanding alliances is more than ever critical to apprehend an open and
interactive world that knows no borders and in which challenges imposed on humans are
global.The book Living Alliances Leaving Alliances is an interdisciplinary approach to
investigating past present and future alliances on an interpersonal subnational
international and transnational level. It is the result of a two-year project by AreaS a
research group in area studies located at the Østfold University College in Norway.
