In recent years, the Mediterranean had a comeback in historiography and other related disciplines. Many of the these studies distance from Braudel’s concept of mediterranée. They prefer promoting histories in the Mediterranean instead of histories of the Mediterranean.

Is the unity of the Mediterranean of a merely fictitious character or can it still serve as a useful category of historical analysis? Did the circulation of political ideas, in particular liberal ideas, which national diaspora disseminated over the long nineteenth century, substantiate a Mediterranean political unity? Are the Mediterranean islands an example for separated pluralities, or not rather for a multi-layered connectivity? Has the Mediterranean become a ‘sea of risks’? How do migrants who cross the Mediterranean, and those who depart from its rims to Northern Europe, experience and represent the maritime space? What remains of the claims for Mediterranean unity when it comes to the EU migration politics?

The participants of the workshop, who will address these and other related questions, are: Maurizio ISABELLA (Queen Mary University of London), Jussi KURUNMÄKI (Södertörn University Stockholm), Matteo LEGRENZI (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Deborah PACI (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Rolf PETRI (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), Vasilis PETROGIANNIS (Södertörn University Stockholm), Gabriele PROGLIO (Tunis El Manar University and European University Institute), Konstantina ZANOU (IEA Paris and Columbia University)