LOCAL/GLOBAL  10th La Manouba University Symposium 

The 10th edition of the University of La Manouba’s International and Interdisciplinary Symposium will be held from 10 to 13 October 2023. In line with the previous editions, researchers from the University of Manouba, other Tunisian and foreign universities, representing different disciplines, are invited to exchange views, explore hypotheses and new paths of knowledge production within the perspectives proposed by the Local/Global binary. We invite contributions covering a wide range of academic disciplines such as geography, history, economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, discourse analysis, journalism and the media, design, management, life sciences, literature and the arts.

The Symposium aims to shed light on academic breakthroughs and trends in studies on the impact of globalization, multiculturalism, and the advent of ICTs as well as the evolution of Key Generic Technologies TCGs faced by the contemporary world. It involves partaking in the reflection on the global and its regulation within a reality of established and disparate local governance and organization. The Symposium will give particular attention to the mechanisms and forms of regulation whose complexity is increasing considerably in the light of the growing volume and speed of exchanged and processed data and the recent advances of artificial intelligence.

Conservative or liberal, few strategic or practical conversations escape the necessity of simultaneously considering the global at the local level and vice versa. Indeed, this necessity imposes another binary: autonomy/heteronomy-dependence, which refers to the functioning of institutions and systems. The balances between the requirements of the “here and now” and the commitment to the future and "beyond" are constantly being explored. They sometimes allow the emergence of new concepts such as the Glocal, which means the intersection of two scales.

However, local research, because of the numerous obstacles affecting its dissemination, does not always contribute to overall progress; hence the interest in exploring new academic and intellectual attitudes through the inter-, the multi-, the trans-disciplinary and regional exchanges proposed for discussion by the Symposium. Recent events such as the Covid-19 crisis or the war in Ukraine expose the incongruities resulting from each dimension. Without a doubt, the dynamics of sharing and gathering data during the COVID-19 pandemic have largely contributed to scientific breakthroughs and have brought about new pooling opportunities, while consolidating existing ones. Local efforts have connected to the global objective of human safety. Nevertheless, the crisis has also exposed the fragility of businesses and the limits of their resilience to crises within a global context.

Similarly, the local and multidimensional war in Ukraine has had a global impact on food security, production and consumption standards as well as social stability in many countries around the world. It has resulted in an accelerated globally coordinated action, very distinctive compared to the slow action to counter many other common threats such as climate change, the leveling off of natural resources, migration, poverty and famine. Because of the generalized inflation and trade disruption, this war has triggered an unprecedented “crisis”, which refers to associated concepts such as change, manifestations of the episodic, the circumstantial and fluctuations. Such novel situations have raised questions about the dialectics of the local and the global.

In considering State sovereignty and geo-political constraints, security and the guarantees of individual freedoms and human rights, identities and their alterities, each mono-, multi-, inter- or trans-disciplinary scientific production leads inevitably to the debate around the two poles: the Local and the Global. It entails questions on how to (re)think the universal and the particular, the global and the specific, in a context of “glocalization”? To what extent are contemporary societies able to cope with local and global risks (epidemics, economic crises, food dependence, global warming, water stress, extremism, injustice, increasing inequalities, information wars…)? What are the political, economic, social and cultural transformations linked to the globalization process, occurring and being felt at the local level? How can the humanities contribute to understanding the complexity of the consequences induced by the systemic tensions and their power in the reformulation of subjects of study?

In an attempt to contribute to emerging research perspectives, Manouba University proposes The Global/The local as the theme for its 10th interdisciplinary symposium. This edition aims to be an opportunity for exchanges around overlapping and comparative research dealing with the local and the global. After all, isn't the university itself concerned with the imperatives of producing knowledge locally with the perspective of achieving both local and global objectives?

The 10th University of La Manouba interdisciplinary Symposium is scheduled for 10 to 13 October 2023. 

In line with the previous sessions, 4 days of fruitful academic exchanges will be hosted by the University of Manouba’s 15 higher education and research institutions, and will allow exchanging views and exploring new research and knowledge production around the theme the Local/the Global.

Both junior and senior academics, researchers, and doctoral students from the UMA as well as other Tunisian and international universities, are invited to submit their proposals to the scientific committee for presentations (oral or displayed),  round tables (panels), workshops or master classes, on issues related to the Symposium’s theme.

We invite proposals that cover mono-, multi- or transdisciplinary academic fields in the humanities and social sciences, experimental sciences hard sciences or any other input that may contribute to shedding light on the contemporary or historical dialectics of the local and the global.  

We equally encourage the participation of students, socio-economic actors and decision-makers, as well as inter-institutional collaboration. 

The selected proposals and activities will be scheduled in one of the symposium sessions, over the 4 days. The final program will be made available in due time. 

Deadline: Proposals must be submitted to the Symposium’s Scientific Committee online before July 15, 2023 using the form available online (click here).  

For further information, please     contact the organizing committee at symposium.uma@uma.tn