Global Dialogues

The Georgetown Global Dialogues (GGD) are a multiyear conversation which began in Washington, DC, (April 2024) and will continue in Rome (June 2025) and Barcelona (November 2025). We invite you to learn more about GGD events to date, the six GGD fellows featured during our DC launch, and the ideas being explored in the GGD Forum.

GGD seeks to advance four interrelated goals.

Learning from the Global South. While challenges from climate change to economic inequality and artificial intelligence are intricately interconnected and global in scope, conversations about ways forward are dominated by thinkers based in the United States and Europe. GGD is an effort to amplify the voices of the Global South, generating a conversation informed by the more diverse historical experiences and traditions of the global majority.

Advancing a Global Vision of Human Equality. The resurgence of nationalism and the growth of inequality within and across countries are feeding resentment, populism, and authoritarianism around the world. GGD seeks to lift up human equality, fraternity, and solidarity as shared global concerns by bringing perspectives based in the Global South into a wider international conversation.

Elevating Youth Perspectives on Global Challenges. The younger generation is inheriting a broken world not of its own making—from resurgent wars to rising inequality and a worsening climate crisis. GGD seeks to enrich the conversation about ways forward with the voices of university students around the world, bringing them into dialogue with established thinkers and with one another.

Building a Culture of Encounter. In an era of deep polarization, within and across countries, we need to find new ways to bridge national, political, ideological, religious, and other divides. GGD seeks to advance what Pope Francis calls a “culture of encounter”—sustained global dialogue that acknowledges deep differences while maintaining a focus on the global common good and how best to realize it.

Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs is organizing GGD with the support of campus partners including Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q), the Walsh School of Foreign Service, the College of Arts & Sciences, the McDonough School of Business, and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.

We are grateful to our faculty advisory group for their advice and support (Paul Elie, Aminatta Satha Forna, Nathan Hensley, Karen Huang, Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Charles King, Nicoletta Pireddu, Olúfémi O. Táíwò). The New York Review of Books was our media partner for the Washington, DC, launch.

You can sign up for GGD updates here and reach us at globaldialogues@georgetown.edu.

Thomas Banchoff and Pankaj Mishra, co-conveners