Global social challenges
There are multiple interlocking crises currently gripping the planet. Significant threats and dangers lie ahead of us, but so do opportunities, as new ways of being, thinking, and doing emerge.
This stream of Transforming Society is a space for exploring the complexities of the global social challenges across disciplines and fields. It seeks to build and share the knowledge needed to shape a fairer world, across and for the global south and north, hoping to foster dialogue between academics, practitioners, policy makers and the wider public.
The current economic and political system is broken. Neoliberal ideas and practices that have dominated politics for the last 40 years has undermined democratic accountability. Stephen McBride explains how only institutional changes in our economy and politics can lead to a sustainable future. …Read more
Based on their Journal of Poverty and Social Justice article, Traute Meyer and Paul Bridgen look at the effects of the post-Brexit immigration system on the household incomes of migrant workers.…Read more
Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention has implications for the future of multilateralism, international law and global politics. Özlem Altıok, women’s rights activist and member of EŞİTİZ, a gender equality watch group based in Turkey, writes on the patriarchal backlash against women’s hard-won rights, and how the women's and LGBTI+ movements refused to give up and continue to struggle for the Convention.…Read more
Sue Scott and Siddharth Mallavarapu, two of the co-editors in chief of the new non-profit, Open Access Global Social Challenges Journal, discuss the journal's mission, how it speaks to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how it will support researchers in low and middle-income countries.…Read more
In the latest in our ‘Women in academia and practice’ interviews, Jessica K. Miller discusses her personal journey to her career as a neuropsychologist, and her advice to young women today. …Read more
Our rules of democracy are out of date and urgently need to evolve to fit with a changed world. In this episode, Marcial Bragadini Bóo, author of 'The Rules of Democracy', explains why it’s time to make democracy better again.…Read more
This World Refugee Day, Evan Easton-Calabria reveals how, in a quest to foster self-reliance among refugee communities, states and agencies are neglecting to notice that refugees are struggling to survive. …Read more
Seow Ting Lee discusses the implications of the vaccine ‘have-nots’ on the societies of the ‘haves’, when nearly 3 billion people worldwide have still not received a single dose.…Read more
Lena Näre and Nataliia Khavriuchenko consider how one of the most political of television events, the Eurovision Song Contest, masks the reality of war under a simulacrum of peace.…Read more
Sarah Hupp Williamson, author of 'Human Trafficking in the Era of Global Migration', outlines some of the difficulties of assuming that conditions that drive human trafficking are the same everywhere, and that the same solutions can be applied internationally.…Read more