Spend Your Summer 2025 in Morocco and Explore our Courses and Programs at the College of Social Sciences - UIR
Become part of our lively, inclusive community of driven students and esteemed faculty as you indulge your intellectual curiosity, forge new friendships from across the globe :
As of January 2024, UIR-MEdiNA Studies Program takes on a new brand name, embraces a deeper mission and projects on a much broader vision. The new armored skin of the program will bear the acronym of MENASA International Program. While its administrative staff and faculty remains as committed, enthusiastic and endearing, its academic study and research areas will extend one step further and include the Sahel/Sub-Saharan African humanities, histories and politics.Mission:
Embracing UIR’s core values, the MENASA International Program aspires to provide quality, interdisciplinary education to majors in humanities and social sciences covering the Middle Eastern, and North African humanities, extending its comprehensive outlook to include the Sub-Saharan/Sahel region. Our twofold objective to provide Inter/National under/graduate students with a first-hand subject knowledge, functional research methodologies and practical study skills that would help them enhance their professional education in international studies and eventually to offer professional training, research and internship opportunities and advise to foster their careers in the public and private sectors at the national, regional and international levels.
Vision
:
Embracing UIR’s core values, the MENASA International Program aspires to provide quality, interdisciplinary education to majors in humanities and social sciences covering the Middle Eastern, and North African humanities, extending its comprehensive outlook to include the Sub-Saharan/Sahel region. Our twofold objective to provide Inter/National under/graduate students with a first-hand subject knowledge, functional research methodologies and practical study skills that would help them enhance their professional education in international studies and eventually to offer professional training, research and internship opportunities and advise to foster their careers in the public and private sectors at the national, regional and international levels.
Registration for Summer 2025 is Open
Summer School Monday, June 30 - Friday, July 25
This summer program offers a gateway to a multi-disciplinary, cultural and linguistic immersion, with a focus on contemporary North Africa. Providing an opportunity for self-directed learning, the MENA four-week program combines intensive language learning with a deep socio- cultural component. Based in Rabat, the Summer School program commits to helping its students develop field work research skills and encourage them to pursue their own research interests.
PROGRAM CONTENT :
Arabic Language Upgrade Classes (6 ECTS/3 US CREDITS) MSA-A1-A2 Levels.
Area Studies Classes : Two Modules/Classes, meeting three times a week (4ECTS/2 US CREDITS each).
1. Contemporary Moroccan Society, Culture and Politics.
2. Challenges and Prospects of the New Geo-Politics of Afro-Mediterranean Region.
LOCATION :
Based in Rabat, the Summer School program commits to help its students to developfield work research skills and encourage them to pursue their own research interests: to explore the University’s wealth of academic resources, as well as Rabat’s city streets and Morocco’s diverse landscapes. The program’s faculty trains its students in background knowledge, research techniques and theoretical frameworks, while its management team advises them in the creation of their own personal networks and professional contacts.REQUIREMENTS :
Eligibility
: International undergraduate/graduate students with an interest in AREA STUDIES in Morocco and North African AREA STUDIES.
MENA Language & knowledge Literacy: No prior knowledge is required. Language Skills
: A minimum B2 level of English is required.
Tuition
Fees
: Room and Board : 1100 - 2100 US Dollars.HOW TO APPLY ?
Send applications before 15th of June 2025 to menasa@uir.ac.ma
Now Open for Registration !A course certificate of attendance will be delivered at the end of the program.
Sahel Summer School Monday, June 30 - Friday, July 11
The Sahel MENASA Summer School proposes a specialized course on the Sahel in order understand the dynamics of political violence, the rise of armed organizations of different ideologies, the rivalries of international and regional actors that are making the Sahel a region of securitisation and finally, to increase the understanding of a Sahero-Sahelian space that is facing new realities such as Climate Change and the consequences they are having on a space dedicated to livestock farming, pastoralism and agriculture.
The course distinguishes between three Sahel(s): the Geographic Sahel, the Institutional or Political Sahel and the Security Sahel. All three are fundamental to study at a time of exponential rise in violence and the trans nationalization of violence on the borders of Liptako Gourma (Central Sahel).
The aim of this course is also to rethink security and through the different security regimes which is, today, a hot topic especially after the impact of the French military intervention at 2013. The Sahel lies at a security crossroads threatened by polyhedral actors who move between organized crime and the struggle for ethno-territorial control.
PROGRAM CONTENT :
1. An Introduction to Sahel geopolitics.
2. Political violence in the sahero-sahelian space : terrorism, criminality and conflicts.
3. International Politics in Sahel.
4. Regionals rivalries between north of Africa and Sahel.
5. Governance and Clime.
LOCATION :
Based in Rabat, the Summer School program commits to help its students to developfield work research skills and encourage them to pursue their own research interests: to explore the University’s wealth of academic resources, as well as Rabat’s city streets and Morocco’s diverse landscapes. The program’s faculty trains its students in background knowledge, research techniques and theoretical frameworks, while its management team advises them in the creation of their own personal networks and professional contacts.REQUIREMENTS :
Eligibility
: The program welcomes applicants with experience in the humanities, international studies, in security studies, international diplomacy.
Tuition
Fees
: 1400 euros.HOW TO APPLY ?
A course certificate of attendance will be delivered at the end of the program. The course will be taught in English 100% .
Contact us
Pr. Najib Mokhtari
MENASA International Program Director
Dr. Najib Mokhtari earned his PhD in Comparative Literature in 1994 from the University of Texas, Austin, as a Fulbright scholar. He later earned a Fulbright postdoctoral scholarship to conduct research on vocational learning and syllabus design at the International Studies program at Ohio State University, in Athens. Dr. Mokhtari has extensive experience in the Moroccan systems of education and research at both public and private levels. He 30 years of teaching experience was gained at Moulay Ismail University, in Meknes, Mundiapolis University, in Casablanca, al-Akhawayn University, in Ifrane, and Ibn Tofail University, in Kénitra. Dr. Mokhtari has also been a visiting lecturer at a number of universities, including al Akhawayn University, Mohamed V University in Rabat, the University of Texas in Austin, Ohio State University, and London University.
He has published a number of writings on cultural narratives, postcolonial arts & literatures, global/local dynamics, and language & identity politics. His current research interests center on the “Cultural Unconscious” of the recent uprisings in the MENA region, as well as “glocal learning strategies.”
Since 2011, he has served as an appointed associate professor, a director of studies, and an academic dean at UIR. Dr. Mokhtari founded and now directs the ‘MEdiNA’ studies area program: an interdisciplinary program that focuses on the culture, language, and politics of the Mediterranean, North African, and Middle Eastern regions. He has been instrumental in securing a high standard of teaching, professional training, and research in English at UIR.
Pr. BEATRIZ MESA
Sahel Studies Coordinator
Beatriz Mesa holds a PHD in political science from the University of Grenoble (France). She is an associate professor at the College of Social Sciences at the International University of Rabat. She is a member of the "Gestion de conflits, dynamiques régionales et sécurité en Afrique :: géopolitique des tensions, polémologie contemporaine et Peacebuilding" (Conflict management, regional dynamics and security in Africa: geopolitics of tensions, contemporary polemology and peacebuilding) axis at the Centre d'études globales (CGS) and a research member of the "Culture, Société et fait religieux" (Culture, Society and Religious Fact) Chair headed by Farid El Asri.
She is also a member of the research team at the Laboratoire d'analyse des sociétés et des pouvoirs - Afrique / Diasporas (LASPAD). Her current areas of interest and work focus on security, migration, identities, political Islam, conflicts, armed groups and the criminal economy in the Maghreb and Sahel region. In addition, she has over 13 years' professional experience as an international analyst for the mass media. Mesa is a member of various scientific associations and is the author of several articles, including, but not limited to: La falsa yihad: el negocio del narcotráfico en el Sahel (Dalya, 2013) and Les groupes armés du Sahel. Conflict and the criminal economy in northern Mali (Halfa, 2021).