CELME's research is organised into four clusters that together map the
political, ecological, and epistemic conditions of the Mediterranean East.
Each cluster links ongoing research projects to public events, outputs, and
community partnerships.
Cluster 1 — Economies/Ecologies of War, Ecocide, Pacification & Liberation
War in the Mediterranean East operates simultaneously as an economic
system — arms industries, reconstruction contracts, and the peace industry
— and as an ecological event that destroys commons, contaminates soils,
and razes agricultural land. CELME traces these mechanisms while tracking
forms of liberation, including anticolonial movements and popular
resistances.
Projects
A study of how military operations, naval blockades, and explosive
contamination affect marine ecosystems and fishing communities in
Tyr, Saida, and Ouzai. The project centres fishermen's perspectives
on war, survival strategies, and food security.
Principal Investigator: Nikolas Kosmatopoulos
Funders: AUB URB Stimulus Fund (active)
Participatory research and seed-sovereignty support for
conflict-affected farmers, including heirloom seed preservation and
food-sovereignty dialogues across Beirut, Tripoli, and the Bekaa.
Partners: CELME and Agrimovement Lebanon
Funders: Awarded under the RICH agenda
Events & Activities
InsurgenSeas Podcast Series
Ongoing — episodes available on the CELME website and AUB YouTube.
Conference: Popular Resistances to the War on Our Region
AUB Beirut, June 2026 · 4 panels · Broad attendance from across the
region and the diaspora.
Fundraiser for Ouzai Fisheries
Organised with the Khayyat Sisters.
Publications
Oceans of Palestine Solidarity
Interactive mapping project available on the CELME/FAS website.
The Law on Fisheries
Sandy Tanios.
Report on the War on the Sea Project
Cluster 2 — Communal and Regional Eco-Sovereignties
The region's political economies are structurally subordinated through
food-import dependency, energy vulnerability, dollarised debt, and digital
extractivism. The green transition being imposed through EU-backed
megaprojects reproduces colonial extraction under environmental cover.
CELME traces this dependency and tracks the forms of communal and regional
sovereignty — economic, ecological, and epistemic — that can replace it.
Projects
A long-term platform for conceptualising the Mediterranean East as
a sovereign pole within the Global South. The planned inaugural
workshop in Beirut was postponed due to the war and will be
rescheduled. Planned outcomes include a founding document, material
action map, publication plan, and proceedings in Arabic and English.
Partners: CELME (AUB), SOAS Department of Economics,
and scholars, activists, and practitioners from Western Asia,
Northeast Africa, Southeast Europe, and the Global South
Funders: Seeking support from South-South
foundations, regional philanthropy, and partner universities
Research on labour organisation, climate vulnerability, and digital
tool adoption in small-scale fisheries across Lebanon, Turkey,
Syria, and Egypt. The project includes 100 in-depth interviews and
will produce academic papers, an FAO/GFCM policy brief, and a toolkit
for fishing associations.
Partners: CELME, Bogazici University, APN Lebanon,
and partners in Syria and Egypt
Funders: IDRC Canada (active)
Events & Activities
Regional Sovereignty Workshop — CELME + SOAS Economics
Postponed due to the war; to be rescheduled.
Lecture: The Financial Colonization of Palestine
Hicham Safieddine.
Talk: Monarchies of Extraction
Christian Henderson.
Publications
Stand out of our Light: Loss of Photovoltaic Infrastructure from
Israel's War on Lebanon
Eric Tohme, Sevenoaks School, and Nisreen Salti, American University
of Beirut.
Cluster 3 — One Region: Decolonial Pasts and Futures
The Mediterranean East has been epistemically colonised as thoroughly as
it has been politically and economically colonised. Its histories have
been written from outside, while its traditions of coexistence across
communities, languages, and religions have been suppressed or dismissed.
CELME recovers these traditions as living conceptual resources for
imagining futures beyond the colonial present.
Projects
Ethnographic fieldwork in Lebanon and Cyprus on the everyday
materialities of maritime life, climate pressures, and
region-formation theory. The project includes 50 semi-structured
interviews, 10 life-history interviews, and mobility mapping, with a
pathway toward an ERC Synergy Grant.
Partners: CELME, AUB Mediterraneo, and the University
of the Aegean
Funders: AUB URB (active, $25,000)
A nomadic academic-activist platform operating in nine languages.
Its three research clusters are Nation & Race, Memory &
Monuments, and Cosmopolitanisms & Cosmopolitics. Activities
include international symposia, anti-tours, student networks,
decolonising salons, and publications on Palestine.
Partners:
Decolonize Hellas
,
CELME, and networks across Greece, Lebanon, Palestine, and the
diaspora
Funders: Seeking support from cultural foundations,
South-South networks, and university partnership grants
Events & Activities
Talk: The Eastern Mediterranean as an Emerging Regime of Mobility
Leandros Fischer.
Publications
Hellenism as Anti-Romiosini
Nikolas Kosmatopoulos.
PPIA Methods Course Papers
CELME.
Cluster 4 — Med East in the Global South: Ecologies, Equalities,
Emancipations
The Mediterranean East belongs to the Global South. Its ecological crises,
labour conditions, and struggles over land, water, and maritime commons
connect it structurally to movements and communities across Africa, Latin
America, and Asia. CELME develops this positioning and the South-South
solidarities, comparative frameworks, and shared political horizons it
makes possible.
Projects
An active collaboration with the Masters in Political Ecology,
Degrowth and Environmental Justice at UAB Barcelona, involving the
exchange of students, faculty, and pedagogical frameworks.
Partners: CELME and UAB Barcelona
Funders: Active institutional collaboration;
seeking a formal exchange agreement
A forthcoming collaboration with one of Latin America's leading
critical social science institutions. Initiated through a research
visit, it develops joint research and pedagogical exchanges within
CELME's South-South network.
Partners: CELME and UNAM Mexico
Funders: Institutional visit and collaboration
agreement in development
Events & Activities
Lecture: The World Is in Pain and Needs a Transformation
Vijay Prashad.
AUB–UAB Exchange on Degrowth and Decolonization
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Film Screenings — Anticolonialism as Worldmaking Class
Nostalgia for the Light ·
Exterminate All the Brutes ·
Soundtrack to a Coup d'État ·
La Hora de los Hornos ·
I Am Not Your Negro
Publications
Ravenous Cloud
Mazen Al-Ghoul.