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The Mediterranean Institute is pleased to announce the publication of Issue 32.1 of the Journal of Mediterranean Studies. The current journal issue contains new and exciting research across various facets of present-day Mediterranean studies.

The areas of focus of the eight scholarly contributions to this issue range from pre-war historical aspects of Austrian footballers in Malta, contemporary migrations in the Mediterranean, the Maltese ‘Tripolini’, victims of Italian internment policies during the Second World War, the Cyprus Confederation, histories of domestic violence and coercion in sixteenth-century Malta, Jakob Wassermann’s portrayal of the Sabbatai Zevi, the ramifications of Mediterranean poetry today, and a literature review of Ian Almond’s ‘World Literature Decentered: Beyond the ‘West’ through Turkey, Mexico and Bengal’.

The contributors to this issue are Prof. Matthias Marschik (University of Vienna), Ms. Ayse Sanli (Brown University, USA), Mr Mario Xuereb (University of Malta), Dr. Nikolaos Stelgias, Prof. Joanne Cassar and Prof. Mario Cassar (University of Malta), Dr. Habib Tekin (Marmara University), Prof. Pallavi Narayan (Ahmedabad University), Tunisian poet Moëz Majed, and Prof. Norbert Bugeja (University of Malta).

This issue of the Journal of Mediterranean Studies carries an edition of the Mediterranean: Prospect and Retrospect feature of the journal, which takes the form of an intense conversation between Prof. Norbert Bugeja and leading Tunisian poet Moëz Majed, titled ‘Making the World Habitable’, and which includes a select English translation (presented alongside the French original) of a set of Majed’s new poems, appearing here in English for the first time in a powerful translation by Irene Mangion.

Mediterranean: Prospect and Retrospect is a unique feature of JMS which opens up a space of encounter with leading scholars, writers and academic practitioners in and of the Mediterranean. This is a purposely solicited, intimately captured feature intended to generate intuitive reflection on the state of Mediterranean Studies, the many and diverse approaches to it and its understandings, past and present.

The subject-matter of this encounter ranges from the memory-bound question of the Mediterranean city, mythology and migration, the poetic imaginary of Saint-John Perse, the figure of the corsair, histories and innovations of the Arabic poetic scene, Naguib Mahfouz and the matter of a “writing of the South”, and the Bardo Museum, recently re-opened, as a space of anamnesis. Contained yet poignant, this feature is a must-get for any researcher interested or working in contemporary Mediterranean aesthetics, poetry and cultural and area studies of the region more broadly.

The Journal of Mediterranean Studies is a Scopus and SCImago indexed, internationally-accredited scholarly journal published by the University of Malta’s Mediterranean Institute on the prestigious Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University Press) platform.

From this space, the Mediterranean Institute would like to thank the outgoing administrator of the Journal, Mr Reginald Bartolo, and to welcome the incoming administrator, Ms Daphne Pia Deguara.