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.
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
In this episode, Ivan Kalmar, author of 'White But Not Quite', explains illiberal democracy in Central Europe, the role ‘whiteness’ plays in illiberalism, and the dynamics of racism by and towards Central Europeans.…Read more
Sarah Smith and Elena Stavrevska discuss whether the UN’s WPS agenda excludes categories of identity and realms of experience in efforts towards peace, justice and human security. Gender is not mutually exclusive. …Read more
Andreas Nölke, author of 'Post-Corona Capitalism: The Alternatives Ahead', reminds us that this is a perfect time to take stock of the societal, economic and political effects of COVID-19 so that we don’t waste an important window of opportunity for wide-ranging social reform. …Read more
BinBin Pearce, Associate Editor for the new Global Social Challenges Journal, discusses the urgency of creating an energy system weaned from supplies of oil, coal and natural gas held in the hands of authoritarian regimes.…Read more
Ivan Kalmar, author of 'White But Not Quite', argues that dismissive attitudes towards Eastern Europeans are a form of racism and explores the close relation between racism towards Central Europeans and racism by Central Europeans: a people white but not quite.…Read more
Colin Yeo, author of 'Refugee Law', considers the UK government’s ‘bespoke’ scheme for those fleeing Ukraine in the context of previous responses to refugee crises going back to WW1. …Read more