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Contribution short abstract:

For my PhD I observe and learn from fishermen of a Tunisian archipelago, Kerkennah. How to describe the relationship that a female researcher with an Italian passport (as I am) has with male Tunisian fishermen while living on a small wooden boat in the middle of the sea?

Contribution long abstract:

I began to deeply consider what research at sea could mean during my master's years with the Ermenautica-Saperi in Rotta project. This project has been developed within the university’s walls and on board a sailing boat with some professors and colleagues. This sailing, offered us the opportunity to see the Mediterranean from a new perspective and encouraged us to questioning of how to relate to any 'other' such as human, sea, fish... from which we are not so independent, as we tend to represent or consider ourselves.

Deepening on these reflections was at the center of my PhD project, which aims to observe from Kerkennah’s fishermen how they live and work at sea. The sea around Kerkennah has shallow water for many miles, so sailing is generally calm and the average fisherman's fishing days are no more than three nights at sea. On the west coast, platforms of Franco-Tunisian companies extract hydrocarbons; in the south, the transformation of phosphate - to be exported to Europe - releases toxic waste into the sea and air; to the north, the proximity to Lampedusa, makes this stretch of sea crossed by routes illegalized by an increasingly rigid border regime.

How to stay in the complexity of these dynamics, in a sea that has been assigned the role of a deadly border?

Considering the need to represent the specificity of the place where research is carried out to be relevant, how can the noise or the swaying of the sea be put into writing?