Global Citizenships Project
The Global Citizenships Project is an interdisciplinary effort to join theory and practice, action and reflection, by connecting students, faculty, and practitioners in conversations about the nature, scope, and limits of what is frequently called "global citizenship." Funded by BC's Institute for Liberal Arts and led by International Studies Program director Erik Owens, it has offered a series of "action workshops" for students and practitioners, a lecture series, a faculty seminar, and a conference; a film series is planned for the future as well.
Global Citizenship Workshops
Global Citizenship Workshops bring 15-20 BC undergraduates together for intimate conversations with extraordinary "global citizens" from different professional sectors to discuss the sense of purpose that drives their work and life. When necessary, the workshops are held online; when in person, they meet in the Andover Room at Connolly House.
Workshops are broken into three parts:
- Conversation between the speaker and Prof. Erik Owens about the speaker's career path (including challenges, sacrifices, and inflection points), and the values that sustained them in their work
- Small group conversations
- Student questions about specific own career paths or interests
Faculty Seminar
Global Citizenships Past, Present, and Future
As Boston College ramps up its attention to "the global" in all aspects of its work, including the promotion of "global engagement" and "global citizenship," it is fitting to invest in conversations that explore these concepts’ origins, constructions, and controversies. For many in our community, global citizenship resonates strongly as an ethical ideal to which we ought to strive in an interconnected world, but for others it signals an abdication of our responsibilities to our close neighbors or fellow-citizens of the United States; and in either case it carries with it complex practical disputes over what constitutes engaged global citizenship in action. There are of course many other angles of entry into the discourse and scholarship about global citizenship that are rooted in sociology, economics, education, political science, theology, history, literature, film and other disciplines.