Aix-Marseille University (AMU) is the largest multidisciplinary French-speaking university in France, with 80,000 students and nearly 8,000 staff on five large campuses that meet international standards.
Aix-Marseille University is ranked as the first Euro-Mediterranean University (http://www.univ-amu.fr/en) and a top-class higher education and research institution. It is the only University in France specializing in research and education in Maritime and Underwater Archaeology and runs the only Master Program in France dedicated to maritime and underwater archaeology (MoMArch – MA in Maritime and Coastal Archaeology – https://momarch.hypotheses.org/).
AMU hosts the UNESCO Chair in Maritime and Coastal Archaeology and is currently chairing the UNESCO Unitwin network for Underwater Archaeology (2023-26). In this context, AMU will organise the final open event of the uBlueTec project.
AMU will participate in uBlueTec project with four CNRS Laboratories and two Research Institutes comprising a wide range of experts known in international level, specialising in key activities of the project:
Centre Camille Jullian – AMU-CNRS specialising in UW archaeological research; theoretical and practical training in maritime and coastal archaeology; promoting green practices for sustainable management of UCNH sites & diving operations; impacts of climate change in UW and coastal cultural sites;
ARKAIA – Institute of Mediterranean Archaeology focusing, among other, on research and academic education in maritime and coastal archaeology (leading the Master MoMArch); communication/dissemination in UW archaeology; citizen science in maritime archaeology; and cultural science tourism
OCEAN – Institute of Ocean Sciences specialising in research, academic teaching and training in marine science and underwater prospections; marine litter, among others.
CEREGE, the European Centre for Research and Teaching in Environmental Geoscience specialising in academic teaching and training in environmental geosciences; on the protection of biodiversity; sustainable environmental/circular economy; climate change; and Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) analysis
TELEMMe, Temps, espaces, langages, Europe méridionale, Méditerranée, academic teaching and training in environmental issues, legislation of marine protected areas, public actions/mechanisms for the conservation of biodiversity;
Aix-Marseille University team
Prof. Kalliopi Baika
Prof. Kalliopi Baika is Associate Professor of Mediterranean Maritime Archaeology at Aix-Marseille University. Since 2023 is chairing the UNESCO-UNITWIN network of Underwater Archaeology that reassembles all Universities, higher education institutions and actors worldwide offering academic training and quality research in underwater archaeology. Since 2017, she is member of the UNESCO Chair in Maritime and Coastal Archaeology obtained by Aix-Marseille Université, responsible for the coordination of the international network. Since 2013, she is the scientific co-ordinator of the Master MoMArch (Master of Maritime and Coastal Archaeology) of Aix-Marseille University. Her main research interests lie on the study of Mediterranean harbour and coastal archaeology and geoarchaeology, with a focus on naval harbours and their specialised infrastructure (shipsheds) and, more generally, on Classical and Hellenistic harbour-cities (topography, fortification, issues of urbanism, geosciences). She recently focuses on impacts of climate change in coastal and underwater cultural heritage sites. After completing a PhD thesis in Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), she held post-doctoral research positions in the Universities of London (UK), Patras (GR) and Aix-Marseille (FR), was temporary Lecturer (Univ. of the Peloponnese, Open University of Greece, etc) and since 2011 she was archaeologist-diver of the Greek Ministry of Culture. She has conducted extensive interdisciplinary fieldwork in harbours and naval bases in the Aegean and Ionian Seas in collaboration with Universities and Research Institutes specialising in marine geoscience. She has participated in several European Projects on underwater/maritime archaeology and marine interdisciplinary research. In 2013 appeared the publication of Blackman, D., Rankov, B., Baika, K., Gerding, H., Pakkanen, Y., Shipsheds in the ancient Mediterranean, Cambridge University Press.
Jean-Christophe Sourisseau
Jean-Christophe Sourisseau is Professor of Archaeology at Aix-Marseille University. Since 2019, he is the Director of the Institute of Mediterranean Archaeology – ARKAIA of AMU. Director of the Master of Maritime and Coastal Archaeology since 2013, he obtained the UNESCO Chair in Maritime and Coastal Archaeology in 2017. After a thesis obtained in Aix-Marseille University in 1997 on the archaic amphorae of Marseille and in the Provence, he held a post-doctoral position at the French School at Rome (1998-2001). He specialises in the Mediterranean maritime exchange networks in the pre-Roman period. His research interests include the studies on the archaic amphorae, the production et the distribution of agricultural products, issues of colonisation and more widely of mobility in the archaic period, but also questions of the deep shipwrecks, as well as harbour archaeology issues. Concerning fieldwork, he has participated in the direction of the excavation of Marseille (Place Jules Verne), he has co-directed (with Marguerite Yon) the excavation of the military chypriote-Phoenician harbour of Kition (Larnaca, Chyprus), and he is currently the director of the excavations at Megara Hyblaea under the auspices of the French School at Rome. Finally, he is co-director (with Timmy Gambin) of the underwater excavation of the Phoenician shipwreck Xlendi at Malta. He has participated in several EU and national projects. http://univ-amu.academia.edu/JeanChristopheSourisseau
Prof. Christophe Morhange
Prof. Christophe Morhange is a geomorphologist with interests in relative sea level change, coastal environments and geoarchaeology. During the past 15 years, he has moved his research beyond Mediterranean coastal areas, including the Oman Sea, the Black Sea and the Western Indies. His research tools include bio-indicators, sedimentology and underwater geomorphology. In the Mediterranean, his objective is to better understand the Holocene evolution of ancient harbours, a theme he started 30 years ago. Using quantitative palaeo-ecological methods, he has moved from the characterisation to the quantification of human impacts both within and outside ancient harbour basins. Christophe Morhange is also a member of EPHE (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris). He has headed ca. 20 national and international research projects, and he has published more than 200 papers including 120 ISI WEB OF SCIENCE international publications.
Ass. Prof. Anne Cadoret
Ass. Prof. Anne Cadoret is an Associate Professor in geography and land-use planning, I specialize in the analysis of environmental conflict processes, particularly in coastal zones and protected areas. I am interested in the causes of conflicts, their mechanisms, and their consequences in terms of stakeholder dynamics, governance and social innovations in a context of socio-environmental change. As part of my work on Marine Protected Areas, I study the processes of territorial establishment, place attachment, social and institutional acceptance of public biodiversity conservation policies, with a particular interest in the balance of power between stakeholders at different scalar levels: their analysis offers insights into the factors that play a role in conflict processes and the effectiveness of marine protected areas.
Dr. Richard Sempéré
Dr. Richard Sempéré is the director of Ocean Sciences Institute, Aix-Marseille University
Richard is oceanographer, marine and atmospheric geochemist and director of research at CNRS. His own research studies concern carbon cycle, plastics, plastic additives, and organic contaminants in atmospheric and aquatic systems. Richard has been a student in French Universities and post-doctoral fellow in Tokyo, Japan. He has been a member of several national governmental organizations and PI of several research projects including the JPI-Ocean Andromeda dealing with microplastic in seawater. He is author or co-author of more than 110 scientific publications in peer review journals and supervised studies of numerous PhD and post-doctoral researchers. In the last 20 years Richard has created and been the director successively of the research laboratories LMGEM, Mediterranean institute of Oceanography (MIO) and recently the Aix-Marseille University (AMU) -graduate school Ocean Sciences Institute gathering 20 laboratories in marine sciences from Oceanography to law of the sea. Since 2022, he is scientific co-chair of the European Ocean Research and Education Alliance (EOREA).
Ass. Prof. François Sabatier
Ass. Prof. François Sabatier is an Assistant Professor in Physical Geography in Aix Marseille University. His research focuses on coastal morphodynamics, mainly in the Mediterranean. To understand the geomorphological functioning of beaches, he also integrates interactions with river sediment inputs, coastal engineering structures and climate change (sea level rise and storms) on different spatial and temporal scales.
Ass. Prof. François Sabatier
Ass. Prof. François Sabatier is an Assistant Professor in Physical Geography in Aix Marseille University. His research focuses on coastal morphodynamics, mainly in the Mediterranean. To understand the geomorphological functioning of beaches, he also integrates interactions with river sediment inputs, coastal engineering structures and climate change (sea level rise and storms) on different spatial and temporal scales.
Jafar Anbar
Jafar Anbar is a PhD candidate in maritime archaeology and coastal geoarchaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean, CIVIS joint PhD degree between Aix-Marseille University (AMU) and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). He is specialised in UW techniques related AUV piloting, topographic surveys, underwater photogrammetric documentation and 3D reconstruction.