CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: Mediterranean Hybridity Roundtable

An interdisciplinary roundtable on the legal and normative hybridity of the Mediterranean region will be held in Catania on Monday, 25 October 2010. Organised with Juris Diversitas and hosted at the University of Catania, the event is part of the Mediterranean Hybridity Project launched in Malta in June 2010.

The extraordinary legal and normative hybridity of the Mediterranean was produced in a complex history of conquest, colonisation, and social and legal diffusion across shifting and porous boundaries. But studies of the subject have been isolated, sporadic, and too often framed within narrow jurisdictional and disciplinary constraints.

The Mediterannean Hybridity Project is creating a collaborative interdisciplinary network of experts to study both (i) the state laws that are the domain of lawyers and (ii) the wider normative orders typically studied by social scientists. The project marries conceptual and empirical models from the legal and social sciences, especially earlier analyses of ‘mixed legal systems’ and normative (or legal) pluralism.

Our intention is to create multidisciplinary jurisdictional reports, resulting in a published collection, and a database on the laws and non-state norms of the region. The roundtable will allow the project leaders to select the participants involved over the course of the project and to finalise the questions to be posed.

The outcome of the project will be more accurate, useful, and accessible accounts of Mediterranean legalities. It may produce an analytical model more useful than existing taxonomies and methods for new research in the region, in Europe, and around the world.

The project leaders are Dr Seán Patrick Donlan (University of Limerick), Dr David Zammit (University of Malta), and Dr Simon Mercieca (University of Malta).

While the organisers will not be able to fund expenses, there is no cost to attend. We are especially eager to include participants (i) from the Balkans, the Levant, and North Africa and (ii) anthropologists, geographers, historians, and sociologists.

For additional information, contact Dr Seán Patrick Donlan (sean.donlan@ul.ie) or, after 1 September, Dr Biagio Andò (bando@lex.unict.it).