Technological advances have an impact on our daily lives. They have also been employed by governments to manage border security, especially at controversial border crossings. Fences, heat sensors, heat cameras, drones and other hi-tech equipment that are currently being tested collectively produce a security apparatus which imagines, profiles and prevents migration in specific ways.

To understand how multistakeholder global governance institutions operate well, the Multistakeholder Global Governance (MGG) Project is currently developing three case studies to compare differences and similarities between capacity, effectiveness, and legitimacy. The case studies explore these themes at the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM), and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

How can we deal with today’s global challenges in sustainable, peaceful, fair, democratic, and effective ways? How can global events such as geopolitical shifts, ecological changes, technological innovations, and pandemics be better governed? Addressing these complex questions requires innovative, multidisciplinary approaches and an open conversation between various stakeholders. To promote such conversations, the Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) program at Leiden University organized its first international conference on 8-10 June 2022 at Campus The Hague.

Jan Aart Scholte was lead organizer of a conference on ‘Future Directions in Global Legitimacy Research’, held in Stockholm on 21-22 June 2022. The gathering assembled 50 leading scholars on this subject to reflect on future research concerning the sources, processes, and consequences of legitimacy in global governance.

On 10 December 2021, the GTGC Conflict, Peace and Security thematic group organized a research seminar. In this seminar, Tahir Abbas, from the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, presented a draft on ERC grant application on the inter-generational dynamics of Islamism in Western Europe.

Terrorism destabilizes governments, undermines civil society, threatens social and economic development, endangers democracy, and directly impacts human rights. The extraordinary events on 9/11 turned counterterrorism into a global governance project. The global collaboration is unprecedented with traditional rivals working together as key stakeholders against shared threats. The collaboration has not created invariable, coherent, or fully harmonized counterterrorism and there remains significant variation in practices across countries and over time.

With both national and international companies operating in the market, the expansion of global platform capitalism raises concerns and critique. To counter a perceived erosion of local authority, various countries, particularly in Europe, have introduced anti-trust legislation against such BigTech companies. Yet such national regulatory initiatives have not dulled the market ambitions of global platform companies even as demand patterns change in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These platforms lead to new social challenges, new uses of urban space, new forms of labour precarity, and new governance constraints.

Located at Leiden University's Campus The Hague, GTGC lies at the heart of one of the world's main hubs of global governance. The programme maintains active contact with many key policy stakeholders. Below is more information about our links to Global The Hague.

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations World Conference on Women (Mexico City, 1975), a process that led to the creation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995). The Global Transformations and Governance Challenges Programme organised a roundtable to reflect on prospects for global women's rights today, particularly amidst geopolitical shifts and tensions, heightened nationalism and populism. As ever, our panel assembled perspectives from different disciplines and faculties.