Mecila, the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America, is one of five international centres for advanced studies in the humanities and social sciences financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in cooperation with local institutions and funding agencies. The Centre aims at developing cutting-edge research examining past and present forms of social, political, and cultural conviviality in Latin America and the Caribbean. It employs conviviality as an analytical concept to describe ways of living together in specific contexts characterized by diversity and inequality. Through horizontal interdisciplinary cooperation among scholars from Germany, Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions of the world, Mecila will establish an innovative exchange with benefits for both European and Latin American research.

Mecila is an academic consortium composed of three German institutions: Freie Universität Berlin (coordination), Universität zu Köln, and Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz); and four Latin American institutions: Universidade de São Paulo, Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento, El Colegio de México, and Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (Conicet / Universidad Nacional de La Plata).

Mecila’s headquarters are in São Paulo, Brazil. Its activities take place at all seven member institutions, as well as at other cooperating institutions with joint projects.

Please find further information here: www.mecila.net