The Eastern Mediterranean: A new programme at SEESOX
During the academic year, 2023-2024, St Antony’s SEESOX (South East European Studies at Oxford) introduced a new interdisciplinary regional programme with a focus on the East Mediterranean region. The Eastern Mediterranean lies at the intersection of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, intertwining Euro-Atlantic and MENA dynamics. It can be best understood in terms of the security processes that define it and have given rise to the re-popularisation of the regional label. This renders the Eastern Mediterranean important for Euro-Atlantic security and Europe’s political economy, rendering it a maritime and land conduit to Europe.
The aim of the programme is to respond to the increasing demand for policy, as well as the necessary empirical and conceptual work that must underpin policy suggestions and the programme’s pursuit to advance academic excellence on the study of the region. This will be achieved through research projects, publications, workshops, panel discussions, strategic dialogues, and outreach events. The programme focuses on themes such as regionalism, energy security, migration, relations with the European Union, the United States’ involvement, and great power competition.
On 16-17 May 2024, the Eastern Mediterranean Programme hosted its inaugural conference at St Antony’s College which explored the above-mentioned issues, interrogating existing assumptions, the implications of regionalisation, issues of interest, perceived opportunities, and challenges. Participants included academics and practitioners from international organisations, the European Union, regional governments, think tanks, and the civil service, all foremost experts in the field. On 19 March 2024, the programme further hosted, over working lunch, the then High Commissioner of Cyprus, and current Permanent Secretary of the Cypriot Foreign Ministry, for an open exchange on Cyprus’ position in the region and its advancements.
The second event will take place in the Oxford University Offices in New York on 15 October 2024, to address energy and geopolitics in the region with US diplomats, practitioners, and academics and with keynote speaker, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources, Geoffrey R. Pyatt.
The study of the Eastern Mediterranean region remains underdeveloped in universities around the world, rendering this an innovative programme at St Antony’s College, Oxford. So far, the programme has acquired financial support from donors such as the philanthropists Harley Lippman and Dean Dakolias, the A.G. Leventis Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Cyprus Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Raycap.
Its founding team includes Othon Anastasakis (Director of SEESOX and Senior Research fellow on South East European Studies), George Hajipavli, (East Med expert and DPhil candidate on Russian and East European studies in Oxford), David Phillips, (Director of the Programme on Peace Building and Human Rights at Columbia University) and Manal Shehabi, (energy expert and Associate Faculty Member in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Oxford).
