This project seeks to reconceive what it means to be a citizen of the world today—as extractive capitalism and climate change put the planetary environment at risk; electoral democracies are seized by hypernationalism, racism, and xenophobia; revolutions in communications and technology open up new possibilities for innovation and connection, surveillance and abuse; and borders are fastidiously maintained and continuously traversed. Contributors to the project come from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines including anthropology, political science, history, English, geography, cultural studies, sociology, and cinema and media studies, with special emphasis on the Global South. The project will consist of six workshops, each covering a particular theme: (1) histories and concepts, (2) practices and instantiations, (3) communication, connectivities, and infrastructure; (4) crossing borders; (5) globalism, nationalism, and populism; and (6) multiple earths. The project will also conduct informal interviews with contributors, which will be recorded and made available to the public. The papers developed over the course of the workshops will ultimately be published in The Oxford Handbook of Cosmopolitanism, currently under contract with Oxford University Press and due to be published in 2024. The project will culminate in a major public conference and art exhibition at the University of Chicago in Fall 2024.

Reimagining Cosmopolitanism is supported by the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, Oxford University Press, the University of Chicago Center in Delhi, the University of Chicago Center in Paris, and the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT).