Once a model of international cooperation and political stability, the Baltic Sea region has become a centre of complex debates in recent years. Conflicting historical legacies and long-term transformations require an interdisciplinary approach to analysis. The IRTG’s research fields include Baltic and Finnish Studies, German Language and Literature, History, Political Science, Scandinavian Studies, Ukrainian Studies, and Philosophy. These fields converge in their examination of narrative elements in contemporary and historical discourses on and within the Baltic Sea region. Together, they expand the concept of ‘peripety’ — the turning point in a story — to encompass interruptive, relational and dynamic zones of change. The work of the IRTG is structured around research frames in which we examine how adjacent horizons of expectation silently or overtly break apart, how the escalation of conflict and crisis develops gradually, and how contested and conflicting narratives shape what can be understood as an event or a peripety at all. Given the far-reaching impact of current crises and their antecedents, the IRTG takes into account transregional entanglements for further analysis of regional specificities as well as bodily and biographical resonances.