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Funded since 2017 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research  (BMBF) and established in São Paulo, Mecila focuses on the co-constitution of conviviality and inequality from an interdisciplinary and non-anthropocentric perspective. Accordingly, the Centre addresses the processes of negotiation, legitimation, transformation, and representation of existing hierarchies as they take place in everyday interactions, within institutions, as well as within relations between humans and non-human actants.

Several of Mecila’s activities in 2025 are dedicated to the topic relationalities. Relationalities have marked the Mecila Centre’s research program since its beginning. The very name of the Centre, Conviviality-Inequality, refers to two relational concepts which, additionally, are in a relationship of co-constitution. Moreover, relationalities shape the process of knowledge production at the Centre, understood not as the isolated action conducted by an abstract cognising subject but as a dialogical and relational practice involving researchers from different generations, disciplines and regions as well as non-academic experts such as activists and artists.

In the first workshop of the academic year 2025, we want to explore the potential of relational approaches for discussing contemporary pressing issues, including violence, intersectional alliances, digital inequalities, re-nationalisation trends, as well as tensions in human and more-than-human interactions.

To check out the program and to register please click here.