OCEAN / UNI Spring Semester 2026
Plural Seas, Porous Futures: Exploring the human dimensions of Mediterranean biodiversity as strategies for coexistence and resilience
28 January – 20 May 2026
OCEAN / UNI, TBA21–Academy's itinerant pedagogical platform, turns for its Spring semester 2026 toward the human dimensions of Mediterranean biodiversity. Participants are invited to examine how plural values, practices, and policies shape shared seas and coastal life. Across one introductory meeting and six biweekly sessions, we invite you to come together with MEDiverSEAty fellows, scholars, artists, researchers and community actors on the topics of values, participation and policy, digital narratives, relational foodscapes, and (sea)rewilding. In these exchanges, we traverse the passageways between the monoliths of art, science and conservation, led by scholars and speakers who are working towards porous futures for human–ocean relations.
The main sessions are followed by Sound Ecologies, an online Activation series led by artist and researcher Robertina Šebjanič that invites attunement to environments through listening, recording, and acoustic investigation. Through field recordings, microphones and hydrophones, artists, researchers, and ocean comm/uni/ty members trace disturbances, witness submerged lives, and surface the sonic signatures of change. Listening to aquatic, terrestrial, and aerial textures, Sound Ecologies nurtures ecological responsibility grounded in resonance and situated witnessing, shifting from managing biodiversity to deepening sensory relations with it.
The semester experiments with tools and languages, relational approaches, ocean literacy, and lived coastal knowledge. By moving between conceptual frameworks and situated examples from the Mediterranean, it seeks to co-design governance, pedagogical, and cultural practices that can sustain more-than-human futures and a more just, diverse experience of marine biodiversity.
MEDiverSEAty is a European Doctoral Network exploring the human dimensions of Mediterranean marine biodiversity. Responding to the gap between existing conservation frameworks and their real-world implementation, the project integrates social, cultural, and economic perspectives into biodiversity research and policy. Focusing on areas such as marine citizen science, maritime spatial planning, and marine heritage, MEDiverSEAty highlights the often-overlooked diversity of cultures, roles, and attitudes shaping human–sea relations. Bringing together partners from six Mediterranean countries, it delivers an interdisciplinary training programme grounded in Ocean Literacy and Marine Biodiversity Conservation.
Register HERE
