BMBF, 2023-2029" data-gatsby-head="true">
The Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) based in Tunis is the first and only Institute for Advanced Studies in North Africa. MECAM’s ambition is to become an intellectual hub that contributes to the emergence of cutting-edge, internationally relevant and visible research in the humanities and social sciences on, from and in the Maghreb and in particular with scholars from the Maghreb. The GIGA coordinates MECAM's publications as well as outreach and transfer activities.
BMBF, 2023-2029
As a Centre for Advanced Study in the Maghreb, MECAM will promote academic cooperation between researchers from different regional contexts in the Maghreb, the Mashreq, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Germany, Europe, i.e. the Global South and the Global North more broadly. With that, the Centre aims to downsize some of the persistent asymmetries in knowledge production, such as the dominance of the European and North American research traditions. By providing conditions for scholarly exchange in non-hierarchical and collaborative ways in the spirit of “research with the region” rather than merely “on the region” MECAM will contribute to increased visibility of studying Maghrebi affairs in general and of topics falling within the range of MECAM’s research fields in particular. Scholarly exchange will be additionally facilitated through collaborations with two network sites in Lebanon and Morocco. While interregionalism will be reflected in the composition of the Centre’s fellow groups and its governing bodies, MECAM’s systematic plurilingualism (Arabic, English, and French) will ease intellectual exchange, strengthen the dissemination of research results, and open up new promising research avenues.
MECAM will constitute a physical and discursive scholarly space in which different disciplines, methodological approaches, theoretical concepts, academic traditions, and individual experiences are shared and can eventually enter into a polylogue both within and beyond the Maghreb. The Centre aims to provide the best possible conditions for successful research collaborations in the humanities and social sciences by providing a unique platform for international scholarly exchange. It is thereby committed to establishing a coherent procedure for ethics clearance and guidelines ensuring a safe and inclusive working environment considering the specific challenges arising from a postcolonial setting.
MECAM’s form of international scientific cooperation will contribute to rethinking both traditional Area Studies approaches and mono-disciplinary perspectives in that it continues to foster interdisciplinary, inter-regional and inter-generational formats and activities. It is hoped that MECAM will also contribute to reducing the asymmetries in knowledge production between Germany and Tunisia, between the Maghreb and the Mashreq, the south and north of the Mediterranean specifically, and the so-called Global North and Global South more generally. In the mid- to long-term, it is MECAM’s objective to become an integral part of the Tunisian and Maghrebi intellectual landscape. Beyond fostering excellent scholarly exchange and innovation, it is MECAM’s objective in the main phase to further shape and impact broader societal discussions both in Tunisia and the Maghreb as well as in Germany, Europe and the Middle East.