MeGLAB

As a unit of research and activities within Luiss Center for International and Strategic Studies (CISS), MeGLAB (Med-Gulf Laboratory) aims at examining how international affairs influence and are influenced by the southern Mediterranean countries that make the broad MENA region as well as the Gulf countries. These parts of the world have been at the center of international relations of the last two centuries, and more so during the last twentieth century until now. Historians of civilizations and religions would push these dates to a couple of millennia backwards to say that the extended or “Greater Mediterranean,” in the words of the French historian Fernand Braudel, is larger in geography, deeper in cultural connections, and intertwined in economic and political spheres. This has become ever more so with modern intercultural networks through shared aspirations for liberty, equality and social justice, human movement through migrations, and new means of communication through high technological and digital transformations in human relations. However, the rise of human aspirations at all levels and globally has made competition over the same means of connections and interactions more challenging, and has rendered the understanding of who influences what and why more complicated, thus more urgent to be further examined and analysed.  

 

To facilitate the task within this new platform, Med-Gulf Laboratory aims to divide the studied region into three major geographical areas, and three major fields of focus, under which sub-areas fall. First, the region is divided into three known areas: 1) North Africa, also known as the Maghrib, 2) the Middle East, or the Mashriq/Levant, and 3) the Gulf Peninsula. While these regions have a lot in common, each has, however, developed its own historical narrative, cultural identity, and geopolitical alliances and interests. Second, the region is going to be primarily studied from three major disciplines or perspectives: 1) History, 2) Society, and 3) Politics. While past history remains fundamental to understand the present, and future prospects, it is contemporary history that is of concern in this Observatory: how it is read by scholars of these regions, how it is interpreted, and what historical moments are focalized either to regenerate societies or to avoid them in situating one’s history in regional and global history. As to society, it is through it that the dynamics and transformations of each society and region at large can be understood and analyzed, that is why attention to the values that societies value most, and see as fundamental in prospecting their future is tantamount to understand how these same values impact some vital sectors in society, like culture, religion, and economics. Politics, at the end, is the summation of how society looks at history and tries to be active within it; politics is the outer face of certain values and practices, that is why their understanding contributes to the comprehension of political orientations of the studied societies and their political stakeholders. Studying the intellectual history of the region as written especially by its own scholars and analysts helps in understanding its international horizon, strategic vision and political movement.  

 

Seeing the transformations the region has been going through especially during the last decade since the so-called Arab Spring, and besides the above mentioned aims, the Observatory also aims to build more scholarly and institutional relations with various research and public policy institutions in the region, and contribute positively to the creation of  training and formation programmes that foster deeper collaborations and partnerships in the Mediterranean, with a focus on political and economic partnerships sphere. 

 

Med-Gulf Laboratory aims to realize this vision through research seminars, workshops, and conferences, which it plans to share in scientific formats with scholars, in working papers and policy-recommendations with professionals and analysts, and in different digital formats for wider public use.