Iméra Aix Marseille

Iméra is a University-Based Institute for Advanced Study (UBIAS). Conceived in 2007, it was incorporated in 2013 as a scientific foundation into Aix Marseille University, the largest French university with more than 130 research structures in all the fields of scientific inquiry, labelled IDEX-Initiative d'excellence in 2012 and fully endowed in 2016. 

Iméra has built close partnerships with major French research institutions such as the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD), the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), and Sciences Po Aix as well as international research institutions, such as the Fulbright Franco-American Commission. It has also a history of engagement with the local, regional and national art scenes such as the Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem), and an engagement with civil society. 

The Institute hosts researchers – academic scholars and artists – from all disciplines and promotes ambitious interdisciplinary approaches. Residents develop their own research projects in conjunction with teams and research labs in Aix Marseille University. What is distinctive about Iméra is the collaborations between artists and academic scholars as well as the relationship between the humanities and social sciences on the one hand and the exact sciences on the other hand.

Located on extensive grounds in the heart of Marseille nearby the Parc Longchamp, Iméra comprises two main buildings—a large 19th century house called Maison des Astronomes (Astronomers' House) and a vast university building dating from the 1960s. 

The FIAS fellows will be accommodated in apartments for 1 to 5 people on the same site as the Institute and its collective working spaces. Residents also have access to an equipped desk in a large open common space, meeting rooms, a conference room (50 seats) and recreation areas. 

For artists, Iméra provides a modular studio space, intended to be shared, whose walls can be fully used for their research. The fellows have also access to the whole system of Aix Marseille University’s libraries.

Seeking balance between individual excellence and collective intelligence, Iméra is today sees itself as a sanctuary of intellectual freedom where a temporary community of high-level international scientists and artists can find the time, the space and resources needed to discover, individually and with others, new meaning and content for original interdisciplinary research. 

Therefore Iméra is keen to ensure that fellows engage in the collective activities of the residence, including the Community Building Seminar, which is one of the central activities, held each week (all day Thursday). The time investment amounts to one day per week in total. 

An active knowledge of French and/or English (written and spoken) is essential. Linguistic skills in both languages are desirable due to the bilingual context of Iméra: for example, the weekly seminar (see below) is held in both languages. Fellows who are not fluent in French are encouraged to familiarize themselves with it during their stay, if not beforehand. 

Iméra promotes innovative experimental interdisciplinary approaches in all areas of knowledge. Artists holding a PhD, and developing approaches at the intersection of art and science, are eligible for the FIAS call.

The Iméra programs

Iméra residences are structured around four scientific programs: (i) Arts and Sciences: Indisciplined Knowledge (ii) Interdisciplinary Explorations (iii) Mediterranean (iv) Necessary Utopias. 

The thematic coherence of the project with the program guidelines is a decisive element in the evaluation of the application.

Arts and Sciences: Indisciplined Knowledges
The program "Arts & Sciences: Indisciplined knowledge" is open to researchers working on art as well as with art, and to artists engaged in situated research from an artistic practice. It is not a residence for the production of works or an exhibition, but a space devoted to research, elaboration and experimentation free from the constraints linked to the final result. At a general level, this program recognizes the contributions of art to interdisciplinary and societal issues with multiple dimensions, ranging from individual construction to major social, political, identity-related challenges. Collectively led by all the members of the Iméra scientific team, this program is transversal in the sense that each of the fellowships it hosts is also closely connected to a topic related to one of the three other programs of Iméra (below). Consequently, in order to prepare their project properly, candidates are advised to read the suggested lines of research at the intersection of the arts and sciences program and each of them on the program’s web page.

Contact: constance.moreteau@univ-amu.fr
Link: https://www.imera.fr/en/research-programmes/arts-sciences-indisciplined-knowledge/

Interdisciplinary Explorations
The program is open to researchers from all disciplines who have a specific interest in the interactions between human and social sciences on one hand and exact, health and natural sciences on the other hand. Applicants' projects must have a strong interdisciplinary dimension dealing either with a specific topic or/and with methodogical issues. Epistemological reflections on intersectoral interdisciplinarity are welcome. Priority will be given to projects by researchers who have produced innovative and original results in their own field through their dialogue with another discipline. The program addresses also issues related to the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity in university research and teaching. Possible research axes among others are: a critical appraisal on interdisciplinarity and discipline identities toward history; concepts transfer and plurality of worldviews in the practice of sciences; new perspectives on cognitive and health sciences.

Contact: enrico.donaggio@univ-amu.fr; constance.moreteau@univ-amu.fr
Link: : https://www.imera.fr/en/research-programmes/explorations-of-interdisciplinarity/

Mediterranean
The program is open to artists, scholars and thinkers from all disciplines. Under the umbrella of the transdisciplinary field of "Mediterranean Studies", the program’s scope is transnational, cross-regional, and embraces the Mediterranean societies of Anatolia, the Balkans, the Levant, North Africa and Southern Europe (including France), and their diasporic voices. It is built around five main research axes: the question of the Mediterranean at the time of the Anthropocene, of coastal vulnerabilities and global warming, as a global frontline of climate change; migrations and critical thinking on the shaping of migrant narratives across the Mediterranean, in particular through a reflection on the history of belonging and citizenship, and the extraterritorial circulation of ideas, goods, and peoples, both in the past and in the afterlives of empires; the entangled historical legacies at the roots of the social, ethical, political, national, and ethno-religious identities which are at play in our present time; the question of interpreting and archiving, including digitally, ways of life in Mediterranean societies; and the invention of the Mediterranean, leading the conversation beyond the dominant “two shores” narrative twofold: by advancing the notion of the "third shore", i.e. global Mediterraneans, and by investigating the field of Mediterranean studies.

Contact: marie-pierre.ulloa@univ-amu.fr
Link: https://www.imera.fr/en/research-programmes/mediterranean/

Necessary Utopias
The program welcomes academics and artists from all disciplines. Necessary utopias are global and local challenges that contemporary society considers decisive and desirable to meet, because of their unquestionable urgency, but impossible to win without actually acting and thinking differently. The program takes a specifical approach to these issues, so that they can inspire not only fear, indifference, denial and resignation, but also hope. It identifies in an Institute for advanced study in a city like Marseille, one of the places where it is perhaps most likely that these necessary utopias will be discerned or invented. The fields of invention and application envisaged by the program include, but are not limited to: war and peace, the crisis of political participation, social hope and collective intelligence, work, the urban question and ecological crises, health, migration, economic and social inequalities, education.

Contact: enrico.donaggio@univ-amu.fr
Link: https://www.imera.fr/en/research-programmes/necessary-utopias/