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.
Cybernetics provides lot of the tools needed to help individual coops bring about effective democratic and non-hierarchical regulation. It shows us how we can collectively manage change in the face of adversity and develop the solutions we need. Thomas Swann looks at the history of the coop movement and ask whether cybernetic cooperatives could be the future of work.…Read more
Fran Amery discusses the impact of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on access to abortion and how the work done by grassroots organisations like AidAccess and Women on Web will have a vital role to play moving forward.…Read more
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