Learning from the Mediterranean: the return of the political and an education in hope

This paper reflects on the author’s experiences as an educational researcher in the countries of the Mediterranean, and on the impact that the adoption of a regional lens has had on his own formative journey as an academic, and as a person. The author weaves into this account the narratives of other critical educators from the region, highlighting their efforts and struggles to install more democratic forms of life in states and territories where the civic voice has often been silenced by colonial and post-colonial regimes. In this manner, the paper invites the reader to ‘learn from the Mediterranean’, a task which requires considerable effort in that it engages political, epistemological, and ontological dimensions. The paper concludes that it is by listening to the global South, as a metaphor with which to refer to all those population groups excluded from the benefits of neoliberal globalisation, that we can open up new spaces of dialogue around ‘other educations’ and ‘education otherwise’.