Never in modern history has organized labor undergone a sustained reversal of fortune, almost universally around the world, such as we are currently experiencing. The secular decline of labor density, the current failure of unions to capitalize on the upsurge in worker interest, as well as the creative organizing happening outside traditional union structures, raise pressing questions about how the current institutional structure, political visions, and organizing strategies of unions may constrain rather than facilitate dynamism. Beyond this, though, a category of problems arises that are more elusive and less empirical. What new horizons of imagination, new forms of identification and subjectivity, and new structures of collective life might prove adequate to resuscitate the democratic life of the working class, the historic sine qua non of democracy itself? These questions are equally relevant, albeit in different ways, to practitioners—union organizers and rank and file union activists—and labor academics. What happens when our research questions are set collaboratively by academics and practitioners? How can we facilitate the exchange of knowledge from organizing to theory and back again? This collaborative research grant explores these questions through experimental encounters.