Exploring the human dimensions of Mediterranean biodiversity as strategies for coexistence and resilience

January 28, 2026-  May 20, 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.

To complement these discussions, the semester is paired with a Digital Residency and Activation series, Sound Ecologies, led by Robertina Šebjanič, through which participants practice listening as a relational and investigative tool. If the main sessions ask how plural values and policies shape Mediterranean biodiversity, this Activation series invites participants to sense and test those questions through embodied, more-than-human encounters.

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.

The program is intended for anyone eager to deepen their relations with the ecological, political, aesthetic, ethical, and scientific knowledges around the realities and futures of the Ocean. Lectures will be held in English.

OCEAN / UNI: Spring 2026 Plural Seas, Porous Futures is developed within the framework of the MEDiverSEAty project, a European Doctoral Network exploring the human dimensions of Mediterranean marine biodiversity. The concept of Digital Residency and Activations is supported by Ars Biologica (Budweis - European Capital of Culture 2028, CZ).