The Politics of Maritime Infrastructures across the Mediterranean

19 January 2022. From 18:30 To 20:20 | Presentation | English | Online

Pexels / Tom Fisk

Mediterranean connections have so long defined the relationships across the seas. Since the 20^th century, these maritime connections have entailed intimate interweaving of war and trade, of businesses, of colonies and postcolonies, and of concerns around labour, environmental safeguarding, and urban development.

Conference by Laleh Khalili, professor of International Politics (Queen Mary University of London) and Sergio Rodríguez López-Ros, vice-rector of Institutional Relations (Universitat Abat Oliba CEU). Co-organised by the IEMed as part of the Aula Mediterrània 2021-22 programme in collaboration with the Master’s in Logistics and International Trade, Universitat Abat Oliba CEU.

Through the examples of the shipping company CMA CGM, prof. Khalili draws the politics of port development and management in the Mediterranean basin, the devastating after-effects of underregulated shipping, and the contested movements of people and cargo.

Laleh Khalili is professor of International Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Queen Mary University of London. Previously, she has worked as a professor at SOAS University of London and has participated in numerous research projects. Khalili has examined representations and practices of violence in her books Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: the Politics of National Commemoration (2007), and Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgency (2013). In addition, she is the author of Sinews of War and Trade. Shipping and capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (2020), her most recent work, where she explores the role of maritime infrastructures as conduits for the movement of technology, capital, people and cargo.

This lecture can be followed on Zoom and on the IEMed Youtube Channel.