The Mediterranean Institute is an interdisciplinary community of scholars, researchers, postgraduate students, practitioners and collaborators working across the humanities, social sciences and related fields.
Its community extends beyond the University of Malta through a network of Research Associates, Research Affiliates and international partners. In 2024–25, the Institute brought together 14 Research Associates and 15 Research Affiliates, working across its four broad research areas: Democratisation, Displacement and Development; Body, Health and Food; Belief, Identity and Exchange; and Space, Narrative and Memory.
Much of the Institute’s community is built through seminars, workshops and public events that bring researchers into conversation with students, practitioners and wider publics.
Recent events have reflected the breadth of Mediterranean Studies at the Institute. These include “The Malta Thalidomide Affair — the Mediterranean and Beyond” by Anatole Baldacchino; “Parole e Immagini di Una Storia ‘Minore’ — L’Emigrazione Siciliana” by Prof. Alfonso Campisi of the University of La Manouba; “Contemporary Għana, A Social Field” by GeorgeMario Attard; and “Libidinal Bodies / Liminal Borders — The Politics of Erotic Love in Literature and Cinema” by Prof. Angelos Evangelou of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
The Institute also hosted the interdisciplinary workshop Pastoral Routes, convened by Prof. Reuben Grima, which brought together around thirty researchers, professionals and practitioners working in archaeology, history, law, geography, ethnography, ecology and animal husbandry to consider the past and future stewardship of Malta’s pastoral routes.
Literary and creative practice also forms part of this community. In June 2025, the Institute hosted “Chasing Light and Other Imaginary Objects”, a seminar and literary recital by Debasish Lahiri, in collaboration with The English Seminar.
Postgraduate researchers are an important part of the Institute’s intellectual life. The Institute offers research-led MA and PhD programmes in Mediterranean Studies and provides transdisciplinary supervision for projects that approach the Mediterranean from different disciplinary perspectives.
Recent postgraduate research includes Elena Cardona’s doctoral project, “Lost World Dialectics: Encounters of Memory and Representation in Eastern Mediterranean Life Writing,” and Kluivert Galea’s MA research on “The Maltese Labour Movement Within an Anti-Colonial Mediterranean Context 1945–1980s.”
Students also participate in seminars, visiting lectures, workshops and collaborative teaching initiatives. In 2024–25, for example, the Institute contributed to the Re-Visiting the Mediterranean Spring School, part of the EU-funded REMED programme.
The Institute’s community is also shaped by sustained international collaboration. Its partnership with the University of La Manouba in Tunisia has supported staff and postgraduate exchanges, visiting lectures and collaborative academic activity, strengthening connections between Malta and North African scholarship.
Through collaborations such as REMED, the Institute has also worked alongside scholars from the University of Malta, Maynooth University, the University of Florence, the University of Cyprus and Carthage University on questions spanning literature, migration, environmental and Blue Humanities, postcolonial studies and Mediterranean cultural life.
The Institute understands Mediterranean Studies as something that should circulate beyond academic institutions. Its seminar series regularly brings together postgraduate and independent researchers, cultural practitioners, academics and members of the public, while also providing a space for citizen scholarship and professional expertise.
This commitment extends to public-facing participation such as the Malta Civil Service Expo 2025, where the Institute contributed to the panel “Il-Mediterran: il-Qalba tad-Diplomazija Tagħna.”
The Mediterranean Institute welcomes opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, visiting scholarship, postgraduate research, seminars and other forms of intellectual and public exchange across the Mediterranean and beyond.
