Given the financial crisis, the violent transformations in the Maghreb and Near East, as well as the migration movements from Africa and Asia to Europe, the Mediterranean world has once more become a focal point of the humanities, cultural and social sciences.

The Centre for Mediterranean Studies connects Mediterranean research from all disciplines and epoches in the German-speaking countries. In contrast to the "Mediterranisms" of the colonial and the cold war era, it does not postulate an entity, continuity, specificity or singularity of the region. Instead, it conceives the Mediterranean region as an African, Asian and European contact zone, which is comparable to and was intertwined with other fluvial, maritime and terrestrial spaces of interaction.

Between 2010 and 2016, the Centre for Mediterranean Studies was supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). At the moment, the main foci of research are on social forms of organization, centred around Mediterranean rivers and deltas, and on the manifold dynamics of the modern Mediterranean region, especially in reference to displacement and migration.