In a year's time, Seville will become the epicentre of academic research on the Middle East and North Africa by hosting the largest and most important congress on this subject. This will be the fifth edition of WOCMES (World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies), which the Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo will organise from 16 to 22 July in collaboration with the Seville City Council, the Andalusian Regional Government and the University of Seville, among other entities and institutions.
It is estimated that the city will welcome around 3,000 academics, researchers, professors, analysts, journalists, diplomats and other experts in the field from around 70 countries around the world. In this way, Seville takes over from other great capitals after Mainz (Germany, 2002), Amman (Jordan, 2006), Barcelona (Spain, 2010) and Ankara (Turkey, 2014) thanks to the presentation by Tres Culturas of a proposal that garnered 76% of the votes of the International Council of WOCMES against other candidacies such as that of King's College London.
The Rectorate of the University of Seville will host different sessions of this forum, which covers 25 thematic areas: Al-Andalus; Ancient Near East; Christian Studies; Conflict Analysis and Resolution; Contemporary Near East; Cultural Studies; Economics; Gender Studies; International Relations and International Law; Islamic Studies; Jewish Studies; Linguistics and Literature; Media Studies; Medieval Studies; Mediterranean Studies; Migration Studies; Nationality/Identities and Ethnicity; Normative Phenomena and Law; North Africa; Politics; Sepharad and the Sephardic Diaspora; Scientific Culture; Translation Studies; Urban and Regional Studies; Water, Agriculture and Environment.
Those interested in participating in the forum can submit their proposals according to the modality they prefer (panels, round tables, individual papers, symposia, posters and cultural activities, among others) through the WOCMES Seville 2018 website (www.wocmes2018seville.org). Once the applications have been received, a scientific committee, already constituted and made up of prestigious academic personalities from all over Spain, will be in charge of analysing them and studying their viability.
Cultural programming
The opportunity offered by WOCMES Seville 2018 will not only focus on the high number of specialists that the forum will bring together at an academic level, but also on an attractive parallel cultural programme, which will include two major events: a book fair and a film festival.
The first of these will take place in the Pier Paolo Pasolini Space, within the Rectorate building of the University of Seville, from 16 to 20 July, and will become a meeting point for professionals from the book sector related to the themes of the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
As for the film exhibition, whose screenings will take place in the cinema hall of the Fundación Tres Culturas (with more than 200 seats), a selection of award-winning films from the most prestigious Arab and Mediterranean film festivals will be shown, with a programme specially designed for this occasion that will combine award-winning productions from the latest editions of these competitions, with an extensive collection of films and documentaries to bring cultural diversity closer to the congress participants and to the city of Seville.
In addition, there will be various exhibitions, concerts, a prize-giving ceremony and a multimedia show with live music in an emblematic space in the historic centre.