Global (Dis)Order
Global (Dis)Order is a dedicated interdisciplinary research group formed to develop new international research to further our understanding of global order and disorder. It aims to form a unique, global and diverse network practitioners, public intellectuals, researchers, and academics, who are making sense of, interpreting, and navigating Global Disorder.
About
About us
Global ‘Disorder’ is widely seen as the biggest problem of international politics. Wars, disruptive technologies, climate change, economic slowdown, global pandemic, discontentment with overweening corporate power, and rising inequalities of income and wealth are characteristic of our time. Alongside these fundamental issues, there is the rise of authoritarianism, illiberal democracies, and civil and political strife across states and societies the world over. Established political and economic elites’ authority has eroded and is eroding at a rapid rate. There is a definite crisis of hegemony, however that might be understood and used.
Crisis and disorder are now normalized conditions and part of the conventional conceptual vocabulary in world affairs and rhetoric of political and other leaders. Poly crisis, organic crisis, etc are now part of the way scholars and policymakers think about the world today. Yet, this academic conceptual vocabulary is still unclear in its semantic field. But in the hands of politicians with their own agenda who wield these concepts in their rhetoric, it has multiple meanings and far-reaching political consequences.
An interdisciplinary research group
City International Policy Studies (CIPS) has a formed a dedicated interdisciplinary research group focused on Global Disorder studies. It aims to be a part of a global research network that is critical, challenging, empirically-informed, and conceptually-broad.
The Global Disorder research group at City was established in September 2022 and has so far organized seminars and talks with two academic units (LSE and Harvard), with practitioners (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, FCDO and the Cabinet Office, UK) and with heads of think tanks. The group also hosts book launches and discussion forums.
The Global Disorder group is in conversation with practitioners from the UK Home Office, Indian High Commission, and think tanks such as Chatham House and the Foreign Policy Research Center to expand the conversations on order and disorder in world politics. We were also part of the organizing group of the Past and Present of Liberal Internationalism conference held jointly by City and LSE Ideas, May 2023.
A unique network
While there are several emerging centres of research on Global Disorder from Oxford and Cambridge universities, at the CFR in New York, at Brookings in Washington DC, at the Public Policy Forum in Canada, and a plethora of conferences and seminars on Global Order, Disorder, Poly Crisis among others, none seem to be as critical and as challenging to the status quo as our proposed network. They are largely oriented to rescuing neoliberal order, the rules-based international system as a refined Bretton Woods system+, with a little more inclusion and diversity from the power elites from across the world’s (re)emerging powers.
Our Network, on the other hand, is trying to start a serious conversation between Global South and North, to complexify ‘North’ and ‘South’, and delve beneath the surface to uncover the deeper patterns and contours of power shifts, disorders, crises, and change. This requires expertise, experience, research, discussion, listening and debating between voices from across the world – as long as they are serious, informed through deep and sustained research, tolerant of broad views and debates.
The aim is to embrace ‘diversity’ in its most serious meaning – from across the world, regardless of theoretical, political or other standpoints. It is to embrace genuine pluralism, not the pluralism of a skewed free market of ideas as practiced so often by elite institutions close to the power elite. Like political, diplomatic and economic power today, global knowledge power distributions are changing. This Network aims to intervene in this maelstrom of change, to release diverse and critical voices, and bring together scholars and thinkers to that end. This, among other things, is an emerging unique selling point for our proposed network.
Featured profile
Dr Sasikumar Sundaram
Research
Our areas of research
- Global Disorder in the Changing Global Knowledge Network of Elites
- Global Disorder in Artificial Intelligence and Disruptive Technologies
- Global Disorder and the Global South
- Global Disorder Rhetoric and the Crisis of Liberal Internationalism
- Global Disorder in Democracy, Development, and Representation
- Global Disorder in Political Economy and Racial Capitalism
- Global Disorder and Geopolitical Wars
- Global Disorder and the American Empire
Aims
Our Aims
The group aims to serve as a research-intensive multi-institutional network for domestic and international academics, practitioners, and PhD students who are focused on political, economic, sociological, legal, historical, and epistemic dimensions of crisis and disorder in our world. The purpose of the group is to develop new international interdisciplinary research to further our understanding of global order and disorder. It will help the School of Policy and Global Affairs (SPGA), and City to reorient teaching and research on a topic that is timely and relevant.
It is hoped that each node of this Research Network would engage other scholars and practitioners in their own hinterland, and elsewhere as appropriate, to strengthen their own work and that of the network as a whole.
We aim to:
- Form an International Steering Group to lead conversations on Global Disorder
- To build a database of a critical global knowledge network of practitioners and academics
- To develop contacts, collect data, and meet with a network of practitioners, public intellectuals, researchers, and academics working on Global Disorder from the United States, United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Russia, and China. (Other societies will be included as we progress in our programme, including Pakistan, Cuba, Lebanon, Iraq and the Gulf States, and Zambia, among others)
- To integrate these global network members within CIPS and Global Disorder research group so as to build an institution of trusted academic-practitioners linkage to understand and diagnose the world order.
- For the UK group to organize closed practitioners-seminar discussions with UK practitioners on British Foreign Policy priorities that are core to UK’s assessment of Global Disorder.
- For the Research Network members in the US, Brazil, India, Russia and China, and many others, as appropriate and practicable, to engage with their own think tank and policy communities, and academic researchers on aspects of Global Disorder
- To work with Visiting Research Fellows through a programme of seminars, workshops, webinars and conferences to discuss our research and develop a strong critical understanding of Global Disorder in different issue areas such as elite knowledge networks, Artificial Intelligence (AI), wars, the political economy of inequality among others.
- To produce academic and non-academic outputs in the form of books, journal articles, podcasts, talks with practitioners, engagement with global and local think tanks, and develop a Global Disorder Observatory.
The next four years
An important project of this cluster, aimed for the next four years, is to map the global knowledge network of practitioners, public intellectuals, researchers, and academics from the United States, United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Russia, China (and other states like Pakistan or supranational forces like the EU) who are making sense of, interpreting, and navigating Global Disorder.
Understanding claims of international and national knowledge makers from Global North and Global South, from within their elites as well as from critical and alternatives voices, will add empirical richness to the major debates in global politics.
We will be able to deep-dive into the sources of their definitions, conceptions, and interpretations of global disorder, their focus and method, and the solutions offered. Hence, such research will allow us to understand the relations, interconnections, diffusion of ideas of disorder, and its ecosystem of appropriation, and the role of change-entrepreneurs in our interconnected world. Mapping the knowledge network will allow a thorough engagement with academic and policy relevant research on the workings of power in talks of order and disorder.
Academically, mapping the global knowledge network will allow us to trace the concept of global disorder and its varied relationalities to bring to bear a deeper understanding of power works in world politics. Practically, mapping the global knowledge network will allow us to engage with practitioners to navigate current and future landscapes.
As our work progresses, our plan is to build the foundations of the Global Disorder group and global research network to develop into a global Observatory on how global power works.
People
Our team
Dr Sasikumar S. Sundaram (Convenor and Coordinator)
Lecturer in International Politics (Foreign Policy/Security)
Dr Sasikumar S. Sundaram’s main research interests lie in International Relations Theory; Status and Reputation concerns of Global South states, with special reference to India, Brazil, and China; and critical geopolitics of Sino-Indian rivalry on global order.
Professor Inderjeet Parmar
Professor of International Politics
Professor Parmar's research interests focus on the history, politics and sociology of Anglo-American foreign policy elites over the past 100 years, specifically embodied in organisations such as philanthropic foundations, think tanks, policy research institutes, university foreign affairs institutes, and state agencies.
Professor Amnon Aran
Professor of International Politics of the Middle East
Professor Aran's main research interests lie in the international relations of the Middle East, with special reference to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the foreign policy of Middle Eastern states.
Dr Giuseppe Grieco
Lecturer in Modern History
Dr Grieco's research focuses on international law, imperial rule, and intellectual connections spanning Southern Europe and the Mediterranean in the 19th century. He is also interested in the history of international order and in how best to apply historically-grounded knowledge in policy-making and foreign affairs.
Dr Neil Loughlin
Lecturer in Comparative Politics
Dr Loughlin's main research interests include authoritarian politics and the political economy of development. Most of Neil's work has focused on the Southeast Asia region, where he previously worked for a number of local and international NGOs as a human rights worker and development professional.
Dr Geoff Swenson
Senior Lecturer in International Politics (Security)
Dr Swenson's current research focuses on issues related to post-conflict reconstruction, state-building, democracy and the rule of law, legal pluralism, international relations theory, and foreign aid.
Dr Sara Silvestri
Senior Lecturer in International Politics
An expert on Islam in Europe, religion, and intercultural relations, Dr Sara Silvestri is an interdisciplinary social scientist fascinated by the role of faith in society and in international relations and its implications for the governance of an increasingly diverse Europe.
Dr Elinor Carmi
Senior Lecturer
Dr. Carmi is a digital rights advocate, feminist, researcher and journalist who has been working, writing and teaching on data politics, data literacies, feminist approaches to media and data, data justice and internet governance.
Working papers
Global (Dis)Order Research Network working papers
GDRN Working paper 1 - L. Ramos, J. Vadell - (PUC Minas, Brazil): “Global reordering and the emergence of BRICS plus”. 2023
News and updates
Upcoming Speaker Events
- Dr Leonardo César Souza Ramos - PUC Minas: “BRICS and Global Disorder”
18 October 2023.
- Professor Shiping Tang - Fudan University, China: “Understanding international (dis-)order(s): a social niche construction perspective”.
20 November 2023.
- Professor Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary, UoL): “Migration, Resistance, and Micro Disorders”
6 December 2023.
Upcoming conference
Information coming soon.
- Sasikumar Sundaram e: Sasikumar.sundaram@city.ac.uk
- Inderjeet Parmar e: Inderjeet.parmar.1@city.ac.uk