Partnerships

Our structuring partnerships

Our partnership strategy initially focused on the National institute for preventive archaeological research (Inrap), France’s leading preventive archaeology operator, which already supervises some of our laboratories. A framework scientific and training partnership agreement signed in 2023 provides for better integration of these professionals into our curricula, the construction of joint field schools, the opening up of new documentation to our students as part of co-supervised master’s and thesis topics, and the facilitation of internships. We also want to promote a better match between academic teaching and the development of careers, give our research teams privileged access to certain archaeological files that are particularly important to them and, ultimately,make it easier to recruit our young graduates.

Our special relationship with the French Ministry of Culture’s Directorate General for Heritage and the Department of Underwater and Subaquatic Archaeological Research (Drassm), consolidated by the recent renewal of a partnership agreement, encourages the proliferation of joint projects and sites in maritime archaeology. Moreover, this context guarantees the co-sponsorship and smooth running of the Master’s in Maritime and Coastal Archaeology, in close collaboration with the Marseille company Ipso Facto. The international positioning of this unique course is further strengthened by the Honor Frost Foundation’s support for the mobility of students from the eastern Mediterranean, and by the Unesco Chair in Coastal Archaeology held by the university, while our team currently coordinates the worldwide Unesco - Unitwin Underwater Archaeology network.

The Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and its bodies (embassies, cooperation and cultural action departments) is a partner on which several of our strategic projects are based. For many years, a number of archaeological operations abroad carried out by our laboratories have been funded by the Advisory Committee for Archaeological Research Abroad. Another of the Ministry’s levers, the Solidarity Fund for Innovative Projects, was used to support our teams in carrying out two projects in North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia).

Still on an international scale, we have strengthened our partnership with the French School Abroad and the joint research units of French institutes abroad, with whom our teams have been working for many years as part of excavation operations on major Mediterranean sites, in Italy, Greece, Croatia and Tunisia in particular. The institute supports student mobility to these benchmark sites, and strengthens collaboration with local academic and heritage institutions. The MANTA Network project has been building on this momentum since 2024.

Since 2022 and the holding of the Mediterranean Worlds Forum in Marseille, the AFD Group Campus (Agence Française du Développement) and the institute have been working together on the first pilot edition of the Academy of Mediterranean Talents. Supported by AFD, this initiative brought together 15 young entrepreneurs, artists, designers and students from the southern and northern shores of the Mediterranean to explore the major issues facing the region and incubate the projects they were developing. It will be renewed in 2025.

Our key partners