Research activities
The research activities of the Asia, Africa and Mediterranean section are centred on three main areas:
1) The study of Classical and Modern languages (in particular: Arabic, Aramaic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Hindi, Neo-Aramaic, Neo-Hebrew, Pali, Sanskrit, Syriac, Somali, Swahili, Cushitic languages of East Africa) from the point of view of Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching. As an example, these studies range from linguistic hybridisation (pidgins and creoles) to Typological Linguistics, Phonetics, Phonology, to contact/switching phenomena related to languages, cultures and literatures.
2) The study of texts, in their literary and philological aspects, in various geographic and cultural areas (Anglosphere, postcolonial areas, Sinology, classical and medieval Indology and Tibetology): from Text Criticism to the reception of Western/Asian literary texts in Asian/Western areas, from Translation Studies to the research on the interaction between the orality and writing in cultural processes.
3) Historical Studies (China, India and Islamic countries in particular) and Philosophical/Religious Studies (Indian and Sino-Japanese areas in particular) in their classical, modern and contemporary aspects, covering contexts which range from the intellectual history of Asian countries to the theoretical, ethical and political interaction of Asian thought with contemporary thought.