From 5 to 7 November 2024, MECAM invites you to the conference "A Decolonial Mediterranean? Disparities, Imaginations, Power Relations" in Tunis. Immerse yourself in an interdisciplinary dialogue on the challenges and possibilities of a decolonial Mediterranean. Join us in exploring the complex inequalities, creative visions and power relations that characterise this region.
The Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) and several partners are organizing the international conference titled “A Decolonial Mediterranean? Disparities, Imaginations, Power Relations,” which invites scholars to explore the idea of a decolonial Mediterranean.
The conference will be held at the National Library in Tunis, from November 5 – 7, 2024. The nearly 20 lectures will be given by participants from different countries and continents and organized into panels roughly based on MECAM's five interdisciplinary research fields (“Aesthetics & Cultural Practices”, “Inequality & Mobility”, “Memory & Justice”, “Resources & Sustainability”, & “Identities & Beliefs”).
In particular, the conference aims to discuss the colonial conditions and legacies of the western-European invention and intervention of and in the Mediterranean in relation to alternative de- and postcolonial imaginations, practices and relations of a Mediterranean region, space or concept. It will contrast the imperial age (1800-1950) and contemporary history and politics in order to address the relations and disparities between time periods and spatial imaginations, but also between different actors and their discourses and practices.
MECAM is a research centre for interdisciplinary research and academic exchange based in Tunis. MECAM promotes the internationalization of research in the humanities and social sciences across the Mediterranean. Under its guiding theme “Imagining Futures –Dealing with Disparity”, MECAM aims to discuss the (re)negotiation of complex social and political conditions and expectations, norms and legacies in the wake of the “Arab Spring” in the Maghreb, the Middle East, Europe and beyond. The necessary backdrop to these processes are the disparities and inequalities that divide the Maghreb and its neighbouring regions – both historically and nowadays.
MECAM is a joint initiative of seven German and Tunisian universities and research institutions and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
