Montage 2: Spatialization of hope and frustration in public waiting spaces

Special Issue no. 2 | March 2023

Urban Morphology & Violence

Global Challenges

Special Issue no. 2 | March 2023

Urban Morphology & Violence

The essays in this volume are the product of a new ‘research practicum‘ course in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. They build on the debates on ‘Urban Morphology and violence’ to reflect on the associations between cities – their political orders and disorders – and outcomes ranging from occupation and resistance to marginalisation and containment. These texts foreshadow the possibility of centring – and challenging – the urban in our understanding of contemporary conflict, violence and peace. They are a first step in opening up a research agenda for a more textured analysis of spatial, geographical and temporal dynamics within the city in relation to violence, and, therefore, the mobilisation of spatial, temporal and visual modes of analysis. The promise is to make visible the varied roles of urban morphologies – adding to the debate on cities in and as sites of conflict.

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Issue no. 17 | May 2025

Diplomacy Today

Global Challenges

Issue no. 17 | May 2025

Diplomacy Today

Post–Cold War diplomacy has been a diplomacy of globalisation, building on multilateralism and cooperation. The recent questioning of globalisation has led to the questioning of diplomacy, which seems to have been dealt the final blow by Trump’s second election as President of the United States. His vision of a hyper–diplomatic realism — transactional, disruptive, based on force and serving the sole interests of America — clashes with the project of a new diplomacy that many actors in the international community are calling for. But what is this new diplomacy? What are its strengths and challenges? In this dossier, professors and researchers from the Institute provide contrasting analyses of the opportunities that a new diplomacy could bring to trade, inclusiveness, the United Nations and International Geneva, not forgetting the impact of new media and AI.

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Issue no. 13 | May 2023

The Global Disinformation Order

Global Challenges

Issue no. 13 | May 2023

The Global Disinformation Order

The present issue seeks to better apprehend the nature of this new era of digital disinformation and how it differs from prior eras marked by the dissemination of more traditional propaganda (notably the Cold War) or by the spread of American (or liberal) soft power through mass media and consumption. In so doing the issue seeks to address a series of questions such as: has traditional propaganda consisting in over-selling a model or ideology by means of manipulation and mass media been replaced by the generalisation of disinformation in the post-truth era characterized by systematic epistemic deconstruction and the outright discreditation of any truth claims? What is the role of states (as opposed to other actors) in this process and what tools and operational mechanisms are they mobilizing to pursue their global (dis-)information campaigns? What is the impact of the generalisation of alternative facts and disinformation campaigns on the international order? Who is to win and lose from it? What can be done, notably at the international level and the UN, to counter the noxious effects of global disinformation campaigns and to recreate trust in the global information order?

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Arts and the Study of the International

Montage 2: Spatialization of hope and frustration in public waiting spaces

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