HomeThe Sea Ends Here

The Sea Ends Here

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Published on Monday, March 10, 2025

Abstract

In ancient Greece, the Strait of Gibraltar marked the end of the civilized world and human exploration evinced by its name Non plus ultra (nothing further beyond). With the strait as vantage point, the workshop The sea ends here explores ends and endings connected to movements in and across the Mediterranean and oceans. Where does a sea, a maritime route, a refugee’s journey, a political uprising, or toxic waste end? Can we draw lines in the water? What constitutes an end: a dream or a destination, a physical or man-made barrier, a closure or a new beginning? How do people set, enforce, and cross political and disciplinary boundaries in three-dimensional spaces? Where, when and how futures begin and end? And who grabs futures?

Announcement

Argument

In ancient Greece, the Strait of Gibraltar marked the end of the civilized world and human exploration evinced by its name Non plus ultra (nothing further beyond). With the strait as vantage point, the workshop The sea ends here explores ends and endings connected to movements in and across the Mediterranean and oceans. Where does a sea, a maritime route, a refugee’s journey, a political uprising, or toxic waste end? Can we draw lines in the water? What constitutes an end: a dream or a destination, a physical or man-made barrier, a closure or a new beginning? How do people set, enforce, and cross political and disciplinary boundaries in three-dimensional spaces? Where, when and how futures begin and end? And who grabs futures? Competing endings and futures are ever so present in areas along Mediterranean shores as well as below the sea surface. Parallel to economic crises, hijacked uprisings, the refugee crisis and environmental degradation governments stage bright futures through green-energy and corporate megaprojects. Similarly, blue-economy optimism on oceans intersects scenarios of extinction and ecological collapse. On the ground, as beneath the waves, people navigate new endings, readjusting life-trajectories and dreams. Others already live “past the apocalypse” embarking on dangerous crossings of the sea in search for new beginnings.

This three-day workshop explores endings and beginnings over and under the surface along the Strait of Gibraltar, one of the world’s busiest waterways, with base will be Algeciras. It is organized by MedNet and ANTSEAS EASA networks and the ECR-funded project Discovering the (deep) Mediterranean. In Algeciras, keynotes and academic discussions will be interspersed with local tours of sites and topics. The focus will be on-site conversation and collective thinking in relation to the workshop theme and site. Applicants from any discipline with relevant research profile or interest are welcome to apply.

To facilitate conversations over disciplinary borders and different spatial and temporal parameters, the workshop centers conversations around questions of the Mediterranean Sea over and under the surface with emphasis on:

  • Endings: as lived experience and intellectual approaches – past or beyond the apocalypse,
  • Futures: as imagined, claimed, colonized and grabbed on various scales – and the ways social, political and infrastructural forces seize people’s future imaginaries and shape capitalist, political and scholarly discourse,
  • Physical and imaginary infrastructures involved in making endings (un) reachable (routes and floats), (in)visible (such as knowledge production), and (un)imaginable (climate-fear paralysis).

Format

The three-day workshop consists of two full days in the port city of Algeciras and a one-day excursion around the strait of Gibraltar. In Algeciras, keynotes and academic discussions will be interspersed with local tours of sites and topics.

With organizers from anthropological and historical/STS-studies disciplines, we welcome applicants from any discipline with relevant research profile or interest. Participants will be asked to commit to a few preparation meetings preceding the workshop and bring some points of discussion to the meeting, but won’t be asked to present traditional papers. The focus will be on-site conversation and collective thinking in relation to the workshop theme and site.

Submission guidelines

Instead of an abstract, we ask for a short motivation for how the workshop could contribute to your research and how your research can enrich the workshop. Please send a 200-300-word motivation to theseaendshere@gmail.com

by March 31, 2025.

Limited travel grants will be available with priority for precarious and early-career scholars. Please indicate your funding status in the application.

Organizers – committee responsible for proposals selecting

  • Karin Ahlberg (Stockholms Universiteit)
  • Lino Camprubi (Universidad de Sevilla)
  • Alice Elliot (Goldsmiths, University of London)
  • Marta Gentilucci (Universitetet i Bergen)
  • Hege Høyer Leivestad (Universitetet i Oslo)
  • Raffaele Maddaluno (Università di Roma « La Sapienza »)

Places

  • Algeciras, Kingdom of Spain

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Monday, March 31, 2025

Keywords

  • Méditerranée, infrastructure, STS, futur, anthropologie

Contact(s)

  • Marta Gentilucci
    courriel : M [dot] Gentilucci [at] uib [dot] no

Information source

  • Gabriele Orlandi
    courriel : gabriele [dot] orlandi [at] univ-amu [dot] fr

License

CC-BY-4.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .

To cite this announcement

Karin Ahlberg, Gabriele Orlandi, Alice Elliot, Hege Høyer Leivestad, Marta Gentilucci, « The Sea Ends Here », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Monday, March 10, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/13ftc

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