Just weeks into his academic life, Norbert Bugeja finds his PhD dissertation is particularly relevant to the uprisings in North Africa, as David Schembri finds out.

Despite being neighbours, the Maltese have been “living in a bubble”, oblivious to the situations in North African countries they went on holiday to, according to fledgling academic Norbert Bugeja.

Dr Bugeja recently attracted some media attention as his new employer, the University, sent out a press release highlighting his rare achievement of a doctoral dissertation in post colonial literature that passed with no corrections and in which he zoomed in on events under oppressive regimes.

Speaking to The Times, Dr Bugeja answers slowly as he thinks hard on the questions and evidently keeps thinking about the issues as he later offers to update his answers in writing, which had to be updated anyway as the situation in North Africa rapidly developed.

“The slogan ‘Malta 360 degrees’ comes to mind. I believe we’ve been living in a ‘Malta 180 degrees’ world, where we have ignored what is south of us, our African and Arabic roots, and looked exclusively at our European identity,” Dr Bugeja says.

“I think most Maltese, and I suspect many politicians too, are not actually interested in even being aware of what it means to be living in a country, like Malta, that is flanked by some of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world over,” the academic points out.

“Over the years, successive Maltese governments have kept, more or less, fastidiously good relations with Muammar Gaddafi’s regime as well as Hosni Mubarak’s and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s since their inception, in the name of regional stability and because of our country’s strategic interests.

“For many years we have taken holidays and excursions to Egypt, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia as if nothing has been happening... We have long known about Abdallah Qallal’s Ministry of the Interior in Tunisia. We have long known about the southern Libyan border. These are torture chambers. We know the Palestinian Authority is interested in keeping relations with Israel as stable as possible and to uphold the now infamous Oslo process and these are, of course, not the aspirations and urgent needs of the Occupied Palestinians.

“I think there is, here, a general culture of non-participation and that, as a people, we are not at all interested in the directions politics as it is done in our region is taking. We live in a bubble. And we cannot gain true respect on the international stage without at least some of our representatives speaking out directly to the remaining regimes, which are living on borrowed time anyway.”

In his doctoral dissertation, Dr Bugeja had, perhaps presciently, focused on the role of literature under oppressive regimes.

“As Edward W. Said had noted many years ago, when many of these regimes were still in their early years, literature, be it a novel, a poem, a dramatic script is always a part of the social milieu that it emerges from and, therefore, participates strongly and affects the course of people’s thoughts and decisions.

“Under conditions in which literature is banned, the desire for it evidently becomes more arduous and proactive. Once a text circulates, within and beyond its national borders, it is interpreted. Countless people have been shocked into the hideous truths about Libya’s regime after having read Hisham Matar’s novel, In The Country Of Men. Matar’s father was abducted by the Libyan security forces and disappeared – his family knows nothing about him, the condition of his health or his whereabouts. For 25 years they have been wondering whether he is still alive or not, after all. It was a story that prodded Anglophone readerships and attuned them to the realities of today’s Libya.

“Let us also keep in mind that those currently oppressed under these regimes have virtually had no control over their history. They have not possessed the democratic means to better their lives and to even tell their stories and they were and some still are prohibited from interpreting it or writing it out. All they have is the memory of what they have been through. And, therefore, literature comes to play a crucial role as a vehicle of memory in an era in which a vast fund of memories in our region is disappearing or is being systematically crushed and erased,” Dr Bugeja reflects.