CGHR thinks critically and innovatively to foster citizen voice and solidarity-building towards a just, inclusive and better world.
Across the world, societies and polities face rapid transformations in technology, alongside upheavals in climate, health, conflict and global order, and demands to address historic and new injustices. Our challenge is to more sharply understand these dynamics and their implications, and to improve how research supports progressive change and those who drive it.
Thinking with practitioners, at CGHR we are reimagining how justice, solidarity and citizen voice can flourish with or against technology.
Academic research centres committed to praxis have a crucial role to play. At their best, they combine independence and freedom of thought, rigorous and innovative research, and patient and deep exchanges with practitioners.
In our 10 years, we have learnt that the crucial spaces for new thinking and action on justice, well-being and citizen voice challenges lie at intersections and in interactions between practice and scholarship, between disciplines, and between individuals and institutions across the world.
CGHR’s distinctive approach, developed from empirical and theoretical innovation during our first decade, follows these tenets:
- Social sciences-led critical thinking, informed by deep interdisciplinarity;
- Student-led initiatives manifesting collaborative and inclusive knowledge generation – across disciplines, levels, and institutions;
- Deliberate bridge-building between scholarship and practice;
- Close collaborations with practitioners to identify issues and problems and design solutions and innovations starting from a grassroots level;
- Bringing collaborative knowledge into conversation with the academy to innovate theoretically, resulting in design-fuelled research and research-fuelled design;
- Reflexivity around the role of the academy in the world today and the politics of scholarship.
CGHR is co-directed by Dr Ella McPherson, Associate Professor in the Sociology of New Media and Digital Technology, and Dr Sharath Srinivasan, David and Elaine Potter Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies.