Description
The Critical Ecologies Lab in the Mediterranean East (CELME) is an experimental, collaborative, interdisciplinary research and education lab at the intersection of ecologies, social sciences, activism and humanities. CELME brings together researchers, scholars, artists, activists, and communities to explore, document and address the multifaceted challenges facing the Mediterranean East, such as global warming and ecological degradation, social and economic inequalities, indigenous dispossession, and colonial eco/genocide. CELME supports socially impactful research and experiment with multiple ways of learning, knowing, experiencing, and advancing robust communities within just, healthy and liberated ecologies. CELME contributes to scientific and social debates about the formation and the future of the Mediterranean East through critical research, community engagement, and South-South solidarity.
Latest Drops - InsurgenSeas Podcasts
Rethinking the Mediterranean East
This section highlights the research projects led or supported by CELME. It showcases ongoing and completed initiatives that reflect the lab’s commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry and engaged scholarship.
Projects explore urgent ecological, social, and political questions shaping the Mediterranean East, with a focus on alternative ways of knowing, collective inquiry, and grounded approaches that emerge from the region’s lived realities. Each project entry will include a summary, key collaborators, and links to related outputs when available.
▶The War on The Sea: The Recent Israeli War’s Impact on Fisher Communities, Maritime Ecologies & Food Security in Lebanon.
This ongoing project, led by Dr. Nikolas Kosmatopoulos and funded by the Stimulus Fund from the URB at AUB, investigates the impact of war on fishermen communities and maritime ecologies in south and central Lebanon—specifically in Tyr, Saida, and Ouzai—as well as its broader implications for national food security. The study addresses a major gap in research on Lebanon’s fishing sector, which faces the compounded challenges of conflict, climate change, and chronic underinvestment. Through interviews and observations conducted in these areas, the project centers the fishermen’s perspectives on war, their survival strategies, and their vital contributions to their communities. By highlighting their narratives and opinions, this research seeks to create knowledge rooted in the communities themselves, fostering a deeper understanding of local realities and supporting a bottom-up approach to addressing food sovereignty and sustainable livelihoods.
▶
Navigating the Economic Crisis Through a Solidarity Economy
In this piece, Dr. Rana Sukkarieh writes from the cracks of Lebanon’s collapse to trace a larger story of how communities, when abandoned by the state and global markets, turn to each other to survive and sustain themselves. Drawing lessons from Tunisia, Greece, Argentina, Spain, and Palestine, she shows how “solidarity economies”, reclaimed land, worker-run factories, community farms, and renewable energy co-ops often emerge as urgent responses to crisis. Far from utopian ideals, these initiatives demonstrate practical, collective strategies for building resilience, redistributing resources, and fostering more equitable economic relations.
Link to read more