blog posts

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  Bringing Them Home: CGS Affiliate Dr. Scott Althaus Helps Recover WWII Airmen Lost for Decades

  by Associated PressMay 27, 2025 12:15 pm

  This Memorial Day, CGS recognizes the contributions of faculty affiliate Dr. Scott Althaus and his involvement with Project Recover, which helps bring home World War II service members.

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  From Exploitation to Empowerment: Rethinking Carbon Markets and Offsetting Mechanisms

  by Shoutao Wu (Vincent)May 21, 2025 2:45 pm

  Key Points

  1. Despite claims of a "triple win" for environmental conservation, economic growth, and equity, carbon markets and offsetting mechanisms often perpetuate structural exploitation and neocolonialism at the global, local, and procedural levels.
  2. Globally, countries in the Global North benefit disproportionately from carbon markets, outsourcing environmental responsibilities to countries in the Global South, which have unevenly distributed market power and an unjust territorialization of southern lands.
  3. Locally, carbon offsetting projects often result in the exploitation of indigenous and local communities in terms of land and carbon sovereignty, as well as fundamental human rights and a share of project benefits.
  4. Procedurally, the neglect of local knowledge and place-based environmental stewardship excludes indigenous communities from project initiation, negotiation, and decision-making processes.
  5. To circumvent these pitfalls, this brief provides recommendations to mobilize all stakeholders engaged in carbon markets and offsetting mechanisms, and together adopt rigorous, just, and equitable strategies to ensure the rights of the South and Indigenous peoples.
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  Illini Engaged: Envisioning Education at CIES 2025

  by Donna C. Tonini, MBA, Ed.DMay 16, 2025 7:15 pm

  The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) met in Chicago, Illinois, for its 69^th annual conference. Held at the historic Palmer Hotel, the conference brought together educators and practitioners who focus on educational issues worldwide to explore the theme of Envisioning Education in a Digital Society. The conference had strong representation from the College of Education at Illinois, broaching topics such as the relationship between education and cultural processes, democratization, globalization, economic development, and political conflict. This blog post highlights a few key aspects of the excellent scholarship presented by Illinois students, staff, faculty, and affiliates.

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  Academia Meets Policy: Partnering with Think Tanks to Improve Student Experiences

  by Donna C. Tonini, MBA, Ed.DApr 23, 2025 11:00 am

  This past February, I had the privilege and pleasure of being invited to Spain to attend the School For Thinktankers 2025, sponsored by the organization On Think Tanks (OTT) at Fundació Bofill in Barcelona. The weeklong training seminar started with an inspiring welcome session, setting the stage for an exciting week of learning, collaboration, and growth. As the Center for Global Studies (CGS) is launching a new Master of Science in Global Studies (MSGS) with 3 tracks including Global Governance, Global Security, and Gender and Public Policy, partnering with think tanks to collaborate, create student internships, and develop opportunities for students to present work and publish is a strategic focus of the center. Through the new master’s degree, CGS can offer avenues for networking, increased exposure to, and engagement with think tanks across the world.

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  CGS Faculty Affiliates Recognized in LAS Faculty Awards Announcement

  by Donna C. Tonini, MBA, Ed.DApr 3, 2025 4:00 pm

  We are proud to celebrate the achievements of two Center for Global Studies (CGS) faculty affiliates who have recently been honored through the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS) faculty awards and announcements.

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  Arts and Education without Borders: The 9th Annual Globalizing the Community College Curricula Conference 2025

  by Dr. Zach PetreaFeb 12, 2025 2:45 pm

  The 9th Annual Globalizing the Community College Curricula Conference 2025: Arts and Education without Borders conference was an immensely successful conference that will positively impact the Global Studies Program at Heartland Community College (HCC) in Normal, Illinois. The conference featured “innovative strategies and best practices for integrating global perspectives into community college curricula through the arts” and followed through with a diverse speaker lineup that provided multiple subject examples ranging from philosophy, art, composition, anthropology, and political science.  

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  Scholarly Publishing in the Globalization Context: A Glimpse into the Relationship Between Global Market and Global Welfare

  by Yanling LiuDec 19, 2024 4:30 pm

  In 2022, when I was in the process of applying to the MSLIS program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I attended the KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (KGL) PubFactory Virtual Series, which had a session about the impact of globalization on scholarly publishing presented by KGL’s Director of Consulting, Kevin Lomangino. Lomangino pointed out that the western countries used to have absolute dominance in the scholarly publishing industry, which went hand in hand with the dominance of English-speaking countries, but due to globalization, this dominance was challenged. China was gaining more power in scholarly publishing as it strived to collaborate with researchers from all over the world, especially those coming from the Middle East and Asia, and publish quality research in the world's highest impact journals. Globalization was not a new trend, but journal publishers were increasingly noticing the impact of globalization on the scholarly publishing industry, and whoever ignored the global trend would potentially miss out on revenue opportunities. Scholars in regions such as Latin America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East were seizing the opportunities to expand their research output and global outreach, which increasingly diversified scholarly communication.

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  Care Work and Climate Change, Feminist Perspectives under the Neoliberal Economic Malestream

  by Shoutao Wu (Vincent)Dec 16, 2024 1:45 pm

  I once heard a story about an ordinary rural woman. Born in a small village in southeast China in the 1970s, she had four siblings, two older sisters, one younger sister, and one youngest brother. Her family was not rich. At that time, a small household in a small village in that area relied mostly on small-scale farming, rice, sugarcane, tea, and cattle breeding. Children were a promising source of labor that could translate into economic growth for the family in the future. Therefore, before China's one-child policy, it was not uncommon to see a household with five, six, seven or more children.

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  International and Area Studies Library joins 2025 Global Press Archive Area Studies Initiative with CGS support

  by Lily DenehyDec 16, 2024 11:30 am

  Recently, the International and Area Studies Library (IASL) at the University of Illinois pooled US Department of Education, Title VI National Resource Center funding from the Center for Global Studies, Center for African Studies, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center to make important historical newspapers available Open Access through the Global Press Archives' 2025 Area Studies Initiative.

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  Students Reimagine the Future in Global Sustainability Competition

  by Donna ToniniDec 9, 2024 4:30 pm

  On December 7, 2024, 14 teams from across the globe gathered via Zoom for the 4th annual Reimagine Our Future sustainability competition award ceremony. The competition brought together 249 students from 11 institutions in the USA, UK, Ukraine, South Africa, China, Austria, Colombia, and Italy, who spent eight weeks crafting innovative solutions for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and showcasing contributions of diverse disciplines such as engineering, health sciences, agriculture, and architecture to sustainability through factsheets.