Dear Readers,
The question of how to find common ground for cooperation across different, and sometimes conflicting views, beliefs and interest is central to many global policy fields. Contributions in this Special Issue explore imagination and prefiguration as two sets of capacities and practices that cut across experiences, cultures and approaches and can form the basis for new ways of thinking and acting in world politics.
In their introduction, Gemma Bird, Katja Freistein, Hande Paker and Christine Unrau explore imagination and prefiguration as ways of developing alternative projects, drawing on discussions that took place at the international and interdisciplinary conference on Common Grounds held at the KHK/Centre for Global Cooperation Research in July 2023. In their dialogue, Claire Pierson and Marianna Prandini Assis examine how common ground for alternative communities and practices emerge in relation to abortion rights. Shaj Mohan’s philosophical reflections address the question of ‘what comes next’, while Renske Vos’s essay introduces us to collective walking and drawing as a practice of finding common ground. The Special Issue is rounded up by Filipe Campello’s decolonial critique of who defines which grounds are common (or not) and Bianca Sola Claudio’s reflections on the possibility of decolonial care.
Since 2019, Global Cooperation Research - A Quarterly Magazine has offered a venue for the Centre’s fellows, researchers and guest contributors to engage in interdisciplinary exchange and present new and ongoing research to a wider public. As this will be our last issue, I would like to warmly thank Martin Wolf for his leadership and his contributions to Quarterly Magazine as well as the Centre’s public relations work at large.
We wish you a good read, and hope you will stay in touch with the Centre, which will continue its work as an interfaculty unit at Universität Duisburg-Essen
We wish you a good read!
Sigrid Quack
Managing Director
Sigrid Quack is the Managing Director of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21) and Professor of Sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She can be reached at quack@gcr21.uni-due.de.
