Since 2017, the international research centre Mecila (external link, opens in a new window) — the Maria Sibylla Merian International Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America —has inves, with funding from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR (external link, opens in a new window)), has investigated historical and contemporary forms of social, political, and cultural conviviality in Latin America and the Caribbean, with funding from Germany’s Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt (external link, opens in a new window) (BMFTR). In the period 2026–2029 (external link, opens in a new window), Mecila will focus particularly on new forms of inequality in the context of digitalization, as well as on contributions from the social sciences and humanities that adress climate change as a global challenge, taking in account a planetary perspective.
The Program (external link, opens in a new window) of this year's Annual Meeting included, among other topics, the challenges of migration, possibilities for transnational cooperation, and questions related to knowledge production. The IAI’s principal investigators (PIs) made several contributions. Clara Ruvituso spoke about the global circulation of decolonial perspectives; Peter Birle addressed hemispheric cooperation in Latin America; and Barbara Göbel discussed knowledge infrastructures as spaces of conviviality shaped by difference and inequality. In his contribution, Christoph Müller examined the role of libraries in strengthening and protecting democracy.
Together with the Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (external link, opens in a new window) (CONICET/Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina), the IAI coordinates the Mecila subproject “Medialities of Conviviality and Information Infrastructure.” The subproject focuses on questions of how knowledge and representations are produced, disseminated, and appropriated, and of the role inequalities play in these processes. The IAI coordinates Mecila’s information infrastructure and and contributes to strengthening connections between the libraries of the project’s partner institutions and other libraries.
In the the Mecila consortium the IAI works together with Freie Universität Berlin (external link, opens in a new window), the Universität zu Köln (external link, opens in a new window), the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) (external link, opens in a new window), the Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (Cebrap) (external link, opens in a new window), the Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (external link, opens in a new window), and El Colegio de México (Colmex) (external link, opens in a new window). Next year, the exchange will continue at a Thematic Workshop in La Plata in April 2027) and at the annual meeting in São Paulo in September 2027), both of which will be coordinated by the IAI together with the teams in La Plata and São Paulo, respectively. Both meetings will adrress the theme of “Digital inequalities".
