In 2025-2026, Iméra is launching its “Ouvertures” lecture series. Three meetings every semester, each time featuring one of our residents, who will give you an overview of their research, conducted openly and honestly.
At a time when freedom of research and creation is under attack without precedent in recent history, Iméra – the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix Marseille Université – is defending a noble tradition of opening up the horizons to all forms of knowledge.
From its origins in Princeton in 1930 to the present day, an Institute for Advanced Study has always represented a place open to researchers and ideas from all over the world, without any form of limitation or prohibition linked to their origin or content. A place of international, intercultural and interdisciplinary hospitality for scientists and artists, including those whose research or even lives are threatened by any form of authoritarian or repressive power.
A lecture series to keep your mind open and bright
The Ouvertures lecture series is aimed at teacher-researchers, doctoral students and curious and passionate citizens, with the firm intention of keeping open and bright a space of intelligence, curiosity and collective discovery in an increasingly dark age, in which these kinds of spaces are shrinking or disappearing.
In the Ouvertures lectures, international scientists and artists in residence at Iméra will offer an insight into their research on sensitive subjects, conducted without taboos and with honesty.
Discover the themes of the lectures for the first half of 2025-2026
Anti-racism (and racism), disease (and women’s bodies), the price of democracy (between energy and economic crises) are subjects that are not well tolerated by any authoritarian regime. Discussing this type of research publicly is a good sign of academic freedom and democratic health.
| Themes | Speaker | Date and time |
| When anti-racism became postcolonial: the anti-racist turn of the 2000s between colonial memory and the “race question“ | Itay Lotem, EHESS/Iméra Chair in Transregional Studies 2025-2026. Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. | Thursday, November 13th 2025 from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. |
| My love affair with cancer: exploring the disease through comics. | Josune Urrutia Asua, Senior Fellow 2025-2026. Artist, illustrator and cartoonist. | Thursday, December 11th 2025 from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. |
| The price of democracy Globalisation, economic crises and political change: a historical perspective. | Asensio Robles-Lopez, Albert Hirschman: The passions of Identity between Europe and the Mediterranean – Sciences Po Aix/Iméra Chair Adjunct Professor at Comillas Pontifical University, Madrid, Spain. | Thursday, January 15th 2026 from 5.30pm to 7.30pm. |
Venue: Maison des Astronomes conference room, Iméra, 2 place Leverrier 13004 Marseille
These conferences are intended to be a first meeting open to all those who share a passion for knowledge and free speech, demanding discussion. The hope is that these first meetings will be the prelude to successive meetings between the speakers and the participants, who will want to continue to explore the themes discussed together.
- Ouvertures lectures take place one Thursday a month from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm. They are held in French.
- They will continue in the second half of the year (between February 2026 and June 2026) with three new residents.