Lieve Wijman

Research project

موجات التغيير Mawjaat al-Taghyeer | Waves of Change: Creative Hubs in the Mediterranean

Project summary

This project investigates creative hubs across the Mediterranean as everyday laboratories of cultural, social, and ecological transformation. Anchored in cities such as Marseille, Alexandria, Beirut, Algiers, Tunis, and Rabat, it examines how these hubs foster co-creation, participatory culture, and resilience in the face of political, economic, and environmental challenges.

Drawing on theoretical frameworks of nonmovements, third spaces, superdiversity, and creolisation, the research highlights how hubs act as sites of belonging, solidarity, and innovation. By incorporating feminist and intersectional perspectives, the project explores how these spaces challenge established power structures and generate inclusive models of social and cultural life.

Methodologically, the project combines participant observation, semi-structured interviews, ecosystem mapping, and collaborative workshops, emphasizing co-production of knowledge with hub members rather than top-down study.

My positionality – linguistic and cultural familiarity with Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco, combined with experience in cultural management and activism – shapes access, interpretation, and engagement. At the same time, my presence and background as a white woman from the Global North is embedded in broader historical and geopolitical power relations, which inevitably shape and influence my research process and its outcomes. 
I aim to reflect critically on how my assumptions, privileges, and perspectives may shape data generation, analysis, and representation.

Outputs include a written action-research report, visual deliverables (photography, film, or zine), and participatory events such as pop-up exhibitions and roundtables linking local hubs with academic and cultural communities. The project aims to bridge research and practice, strengthen North–South collaborations, and offer tools for supporting inclusive, participatory, and ecologically conscious cultural spaces in the Mediterranean.

About the Mawjaat project

Resulting from a partnership between La Friche la Belle de Mai and Iméra, this action research project, led by researcher Lieve Wijman from January 2026 to January 2027, will combine field surveys in the five partner countries, an analysis of the regional ecosystem of third places, and the production of a deliverable presenting the research results.

This research will conclude with a five-month residency at Iméra, scheduled from February to June 2027.

Biography

I have a degree in Philosophy (University of Amsterdam) and a Master’s in International Relations: Conflict Studies and Human Rights (Utrecht University). My research explores culture as a site of power, resistance, and social transformation. I have previously examined the underground cultural scene in Istanbul as a space of repression and resistance for Turkish and Kurdish female and queer youth and studied Amsterdam–Egyptian snack bars as neighbourhood community hubs and vital sites of social connection, belonging, and urban change, published in the research Journal of the Amsterdam Museum, featuring my photography. 

I have lived in Cairo for two years, where I worked on projects at the Center for Arab West Understanding (CAWU), contributing to initiatives aimed at fostering cross-cultural understanding between the Arab world and other regions. I was involved in CAWU’s secondary school project for African refugees in Cairo. I also worked at the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, where my research included the intersections of climate change and gender-based violence, collaborating with grassroots initiatives such as VeryNile, which helps women turn Nile plastic waste into income.

Before joining the Mawjaat project, I worked at Tolhuistuin, a cultural hub in Amsterdam that brings together a cultural organization, a restaurant, a concert hall and a club, dance studios, and offices for over thirty different cultural organizations.

Alongside my research practice, I am active as a writer, photographer, and organizer of human-rights film debates including for Movies That Matter in Leiden. I volunteered as an editor for Majalla, a magazine by and for exiled journalists in the Netherlands (now merged with RFG Magazine), and published articles on Egypt and Turkey in Dutch newspaper Het Parool. I also contributed to the book Voting with Your Wallet (2025).

My work is driven by a strong commitment to perspectives that challenge dominant (media) narratives, shaped in part by her collaboration with investigative journalist Dr. Bette Dam on Western biases in media coverage of Afghanistan.