Reimagining Knowledge Diplomacy: The Merian Centres as Catalysts of Plural Knowledge

In October 2025, Tunis hosted a pivotal moment for MECAM’s academic programme in 2025: the international conference entitled „Re-thinking Peace and Conflict Studies in a Postcolonial World" (10-11 October 2025), immediately followed by a public Merian Family Meeting on „Knowledge Diplomacy and South-South-North Cooperation: Revitalizing Bandung for the 21st Century in the Merian Centres Network“ (12-13 October 2025). The conference was led by the Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict network, a BMFTR-funded partner project, and co-organized as well as hosted by MECAM, highlighting the synergies between the global Merian network and broader transregional initiatives. Scholars and institutional representatives from the five Merian Centres — MECAM in Tunisia, MIASA in Ghana, ICAS:MP in India, MECILA in Brazil, and CALAS in Mexico— engaged in discussions that transcended traditional disciplinary boundaries and emphasised the ethical, political, and epistemic stakes of knowledge production, ranging from questions of the decolonisation of knowledge to strategies of scientific policy-making.

Reflecting on the events, Christine Hatzky, CALAS representative, noted that “both conferences impressively illustrated the importance of knowledge production in the ‘Global South’ for overcoming epistemic asymmetries, and how much we can learn from our partners in the Global South.” This sentiment resonates with scholarly critiques that call for a fundamental rethinking of knowledge hierarchies, a point powerfully articulated from Maghrebinian perspectives that challenge the very geographical and epistemological foundations of area studies. For Jörg Gengnagel, Director of ICAS:MP, “the Tunis meeting and its many fruitful encounters underscored the vital importance of South–South–North dialogues, showing that a deeper understanding of our diverse institutional and intellectual backgrounds is essential to shaping promising perspectives for future collaboration.” This calls for extraordinary efforts but is also rewarding. As Andreas Mehler, MIASA representative, put it: “the comfort of being part of a community that is much larger than one’s immediate surroundings helps us to form a solid basis of cooperation. In particular, the Tunis meeting invites us to incite even more reciprocal curiosity on aspects of social life that look only at first sight unrelated to “big” global issues.” Finally, on the level of content, Laila Abu Er-Rub, Academic Coordinator of ICAS:MP, observed that “sustainable internationalism in times of rising global conflicts, climate change, and digitally mediated post-truth narratives, hate speech, and algorithms stood out as topics that pertain not only to the Merian Centres but to almost everyone, everywhere.” Addressing these complex challenges necessitates epistemic diversity, underscoring the urgency of engaging with Southern theories and methodologies to deuniversalize Northern thought and generate more pluriversal understandings of global phenomena.

A central question guided the deliberations during these events: how can research meaningfully engage with global inequalities in knowledge production without reproducing them? The answer was repeatedly reaffirmed: by centering Southern perspectives, interrogating inherited hierarchies, and fostering dialogue across differences.

Knowledge Diplomacy: A Multidimensional Concept

The Tunis gatherings underscored the strategic importance of the Merian Centres as key actors in knowledge diplomacy. As Christine Hatzky, the CALAS representative, noted: “The long-standing cooperation between the five centres has created new, cross-continental academic landscapes and built a strategic web of academic diplomacy.” Conceptually, knowledge diplomacy as practiced by the Merian Centres can be analyzed along three interrelated dimensions: Diplomacy for Science, Science for Diplomacy and Science in Diplomacy.

A Forward-Looking Vision

In this context, Evelyn Korn, Vice President for University Culture and Quality at the University of Marburg, emphasized the value of international partnerships within the Merian network: “MECAM is a prime example of meaningful knowledge cooperation and demonstrates how knowledge diplomacy can succeed in practice – through exchange on an equal footing and shared responsibility for fairer research collaboration. It is a great privilege for the University of Marburg to co-shape this centre together with the University of Tunis.” Emna Beltaief, Vice-President of the University of Tunis responsible for relations with MECAM and Marburg University, added that the meetings highlighted the outstanding collaboration between the two institutions and foreshadowed future “exchange projects between students and lecturers.”

Working Towards an Inclusive Global Knowledge Order – and a Long-Term Perspective for the Merian Initiative

The Tunis gatherings highlighted the Merian network’s dual potential—normative and operational—demonstrating that scholarship, diplomacy, and reflexive ethics are inseparable and mutually reinforcing. By fostering co-creation of knowledge, promoting epistemic justice, and reconceptualising global knowledge circulation as dialogical, the Merian Centres exemplify how research networks can integrate analytical rigor with normative responsibility. This spirit is much in line with a number of current initiatives from the Global South such as the Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaboration, as Andreas Mehler pointed out.

You can find the full report by MECAM Director for Germany, Dr. Julius Dihstelhoff, here (PDF).