About IMS

Halcyon Days in Crete VII

ิhe Programme of Turkish Studies of the Instutite of Mediterranean Studies - Foundation of Research and Technology-Hellas announces its 7th International Symposium. The topic of the symposium will be Political Initiatives "From the Bottom Up" in the Ottoman Empire. The sessions are scheduled for January, 9-11, 2009 and will take place at the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (Melissinou & Nikiforou Foka 130, Rethymno).

Political Initiatives "From the Bottom Up" in the Ottoman Empire (pdf 144kb)

The Institute for Mediterranean Studies (IMS) was founded in 1985 (P.D. 7/21.1.85) and began operating in its present organisational form in 1986 as one of the five institutes which together with the Crete University Press constitute the Research Centre of Crete (EKEK). It belongs to the research units of the Foundation for Research and Technology ,Hellas (FORTH), one of the country´s largest national research institutes, which was founded in 1987 when the EKEK was combined with research centres based in Thessaloniki and Patras. The Institute of Bio-medical Research in Ioannina has also been added. The IMS is the sole institute of the Foundation for Research and Technology based in Rethymno, as well as being the only one concerned with research into historical, literary and social sciences.

The IMS owns the property in which it has been housed since 1996, and which is a scheduled building 800 sq.m. in area located in the old town of Rethymno. It is administered by its director and a five-member academic council; it has an administrative staff of five, a grade B researcher, a grade D researcher 18 researchers under contract, and a total of 25 scholarship researchers (post-doctoral, post-graduate and under-graduate) engaged in its research programs. In 2003 the income from its regular budget, European and national programs, and from services rendered came to a total of €484,290.

The IMS possesses a fully equipped laboratory for archaeological remote sensing, paleobotany and palezoology, a workshop for the production of scientific documentaries, as well as a specialised library which is continually being expanded and thus complements the library of the University of Crete.
The IMS has adopted the successful practice of the Institute of Technology and Research in that it maintains close academic links with higher educational and research establishments at home and abroad, while at the same time attaching particular importance to its co-operation with the University and Polytechnic of Crete.

The aim of the IMS is the support and promotion of research in the field of humanities, and in particular historical and social sciences. It endeavours to create research units which will attract academic staff to the area and at the same time utilise more effectively the existing staff. To this end, it offers to finance and administer research programs (25 in 2002), maintains research and production workshops, and supports education at under-graduate, post-graduate and post-doctoral levels with numerous annual scholarships (21 in 2002). In order to honour the memory of the historian N.Svoronos and to encourage young researchers, the IMS announces and awards a prize for scholars up to the age of 37 who have made outstanding contributions in the field of historical science.

The IMS strives to ensure that the research it promotes is geared to the real and vital needs of present-day Greek society, such as historical and cultural self-knowledge, the documentation of cultural tradition, and the substantiation of the conditions for a prejudice-free national and cultural ideology as a basis for rational and beneficial international relations.

In order to achieve the above aims, the IMS´s research programs are classified according to two complementary, intersecting axes, these being:

A) The relations of modern Hellenism with its Mediterranean neighbours. (horizontal axis)
B) The relations of modern Greeks with their historical ancestors. (vertical axis)
The academic research which is encouraged by the IMS is benefited both by the existence of the faculty of Philosophy of the University of Crete in the same town, and by international collaborations with research institutes in Mediterranean countries, such as those in Barcelona, Paris, Marseilles, Rabat, Sassari, Tel Aviv, Tours, Tunis, et al., as well as independent researchers in the rest of Greece and abroad.