The subject of the dissertation entitled "At the Boundary of Empires. Sasanian imperial Borderlands, their Networks and the Emergence of new power structures" is the Sasanian empire and its peripheral areas. The keyword for the dissertation project are the "imperial borderlands". These represent a dynamic region, since the borders of a dominion are not to be drawn in a linear and decreasing manner. On the contrary, through exchange, trade, mobility and complex processes, they are in constant motion. With the help of an investigation of selected local “borderlands”  of the Sasanian imperial entity, new insights into the emergence of power structures outside the imperial core area, which has been the focus of research so far, will be gained. Not only will mutual influences be examined, but also the adaptation, acceptance and rejection of such socio-economic processes with the help of an ancient global-historical perspective. This is achieved, among other things, by recording networks, the emergence of nodes, new elites and power structures in these local case studies. In order to examine these socio-economic processes in the "imperial borderlands" more closely, epigraphic, iconographic and archaeological sources will be taken into account in addition to written sources. This circumstance is intended to support the interdisciplinary approach of the dissertation, since a foundation built only on traditional written sources would not be very useful in capturing these complex networks and processes.