Rethinking Euro-Mediterranean cooperation: new approaches for research and education

In today’s world, the processes of cooperation meet, from one side, the need for a multifaceted approach to the development issues, thus including the different instances from institutions, transnational actors, and civil society; from the other, the demand of sustainability and of the application of new instruments and mechanisms in the relationships between people from different cultures and backgrounds. Starting from this point, rethinking Euro-Mediterranean cooperation means to reshape profoundly the dialogue with the Arab world, investing in the interdependence and the pursuit of common interests, especially after the intervention of the so-called Arab Springs. Moreover, it means the change of patterns in the educational programs, considering schools and universities as the hotbed of new ideas and tendencies for the international society in the future. This process needs to involve also the level of research and dissemination and to provide the use of the newest instruments of distance and active learning. This book represents the spin-off of the FEP/IT Program (Education for Experts in Transnationals Euro-Mediterranean Processes for the Internationalization and the Cooperation between Italy and Tunisia), conducted by the University for Foreigners of Perugia and funded by the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs. The project, dedicated to a small group of ten students from Italy and Tunisia, represents one of the first concrete attempts at rethinking the paradigm of cooperation starting from young people from two shores of the Mediterranean. The book, thus demonstrating the innovative process of cooperation and cultural exchange, and moreover including a multidisciplinary vision, has the final aim to illustrate the challenges at the cooperation and educational level. In this view, the chapters included in this book focus, first of all, on a critical analysis of post-Arab springs geopolitical relations in the light of a paradigm shift. Consequently, the authors have focused their contributions on the EU’s response to Mediterranean socio-political changes after 2011 and to the role of international law in international cooperation specifically related to the Mediterranean dimension. The book dedicated a chapter to the new learning mechanism in IR, that finally encounters the fieldwork conducted by the students during the FEP/IT Program, illustrated in the last chapter.