The Mediterranean-Middle East-Himalaya region is an exceptional natural laboratory for the study of various stages of the evolution of a plate margin, including subduction, ophiolite emplacement, orogeny, continent subduction and exhumation, back-arc and foreland basin evolution, and slab roll-back. Our understanding of the region emerges from studies of wide range of observations of the geology (stratigraphy, volcanism, structure and tectonics, neotectonics), geophysics (seismicity and seismic imaging) and geodetics (GPS, InSAR and gravity). New insights and observations therefore have a strong cross-disciplinary impact. Also, different sections of the former Tethyan suture zone are in different stages of closure, which is why new findings in one section are relevant to the entire Mediterranean-Middle East-Himalaya research community.

Modeling plays a pivotal role in one of the most challenging aspects of interdisciplinary science on the region; bringing together and confronting disparate observations within a physical-chemical framework. New developments in modeling are therefore relevant for the whole Mediterranean-Middle East-Himalaya research community.

Interdivision-type sessions such as this one provide an effective vehicle to present and discuss solid earth research from the entire Mediterranean-Middle East-Himalayan convergent zone, including the western Mediterranean, the Alps, Carpathians, Hellenides, Taurides, Iranides, Caucasus, north African margins, Middle east, Zagros, Karakorum, Tibet and Himalaya, and SE Asia.

This year’s program of talks and poster will again be organized into regional sub-sessions. The conveners specifically aim to avoid overlapping oral and/or poster sessions. The program begins in the Western Mediterranean and work eastwards, though the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East to and including, the Himalayas and Tibet. We invite contributions from all disciplines that study (aspects of) the evolution of this region. Both mono-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary contributions, including modeling, are welcome from geodesy, seismology, geodynamics, tectonics, igneous petrology, structural geology, stratigraphy, paleontology, sedimentology and paleomagnetism.