How did you come to choose your research topic?

I was researching international organisations and their education programmes for a paper during my master’s, and this concept of global citizenship just kept popping up. UN, UNESCO, the private sector, all over the place, I kept hearing that our world needs global citizens. But they didn’t really say much else, like the authors assumed the reader would understand what a global citizen is. In global history, we’re trained to look twice at assumptions like this. When I finally did come across scholarly work on what a global citizen is, they still didn’t say where it came from, as if it just popped out of nowhere. Also, as an American at a university in Denmark, in the wake of Trump’s first election and the nationalist backslide he brought, the subject felt personally relevant. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find a history of global citizenship. I still exist in a state of denial, waiting to find the book I missed somewhere. It’s fascinating! Tracing the history of this one concept reveals most of the tensions of the 20th century, from the rise of hyper-nationalism and internationalism to postwar peace movements and reconstruction, through Cold War ideology, coloniality, and humanitarian development, while satisfying my own particular interest in education. I just feel lucky someone else recognised the value of this topic and chose to accept me here at the Geneva Graduate Institute. 

Can you describe your thesis questions and the methodology you used to approach those questions?

Honestly, the greatest challenge, considering all the different ways I could take this research, was trying not to make this a history of everything. I had to really focus in on how and why this concept came into such prominence by the end of the 20th century, who was involved in its development and propagation, what it represented for these actors, and how it transformed over time. I searched publications and newspaper records, and it quickly became apparent that while global citizenship is a relatively recent development, a predecessor, “world citizenship”, emerged predominantly from international organisations in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Work that occurred in these decades laid the foundation for global citizenship to achieve near-universal notoriety from the 1990s onward. I looked at League of Nations archives, UNESCO and UN archives, and the holdings of various other organisations, tracing out the networks of intellectuals, academics, and civil servants involved in creating the concept. In particular, publications such as UNESCO’s journal, The UNESCO Courier, helped me identify and trace the various intellectual debates and connect them to conferences and programmes aimed at making this concept a reality.

What are your major findings?

When international organisations became influential actors on the political stage, particularly after World War I, many drew on universalist philosophies such as cosmopolitanism to articulate their values. The simultaneous rise of nation-states over empires meant that the language and conception of citizenship and national identity were in flux. International organisations created a space in which a non-national or global identity could be formed. With the dangers of hyper-nationalism so clearly demonstrated after two world wars, practitioners in these international organisations saw a cosmopolitan identity, the world citizen, as the literal cure for war. This became complicated as Cold War tensions polarised loyalties, and anything non-aligned was viewed as a threat. World citizenship was also viewed as suspect for its association with economic development programmes and growing concerns about neocolonialism in mid-twentieth-century Africa. World citizenship programmes faded from popularity through the 1960s and 70s. But with the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent victory of global capitalism, a universal identity reappeared. This time, the “Global Citizen” emerged as someone who can navigate the global free-market system and seeks justice through the multicultural values of the neoliberal ideology. That being said, it is not a monolithic concept. The global citizen of development organisations like the World Bank is not the same as the global citizen of education-for-peace groups, or those supporting literacy programmes for migrant farm workers. Global citizenship is a vessel, imparted with the values of the actors involved. 

What conclusion can we draw from your research?

I show how the ideas and work of educationalists come to play a significant role in the history of social movements, the history of political thought, and in how we come to envision our possible futures. Education should expand, not restrict, our imagination of possibilities for the world. At the same time, we must grapple with the sorted legacies of failed universalist projects and the hypocrisies of institutions and structures of power that spoke of freedom and democracy, but have largely maintained the economic and political relations of European colonialism. In my work, I sought to demonstrate how we might balance the history of an aspirational, optimistic concept with the realities of individual and institutional prejudices and limitations. I hope this research will be of interest to anyone interested in the history of 20th-century social movements, education, international organisations, and world order.

What are you going to do now?

The end of this PhD marks the beginning of the next phase, which I envision will include several books, articles, research projects, and the creation of platforms and resources to transform education. Most of all, I intend to learn and teach in whatever context I find myself. History is most interesting when it unmasks the reality behind unquestioned narratives, and that is a process best done in community.

*     *     *

On 18 September 2025, Bram Corydon Barnes defended his PhD thesis in International History, titled “The Making of Global Citizenship: Education, Liberal Internationalism, and Negotiating Worldmaking in the Globalizing 20th Century”. Committee members were Associate Professor Carolyn Biltoft, Thesis Supervisor; Professor Jussi Hanhimäki, President of the Committee and Internal Member; and Associate Professor Daniel Laqua, Department of Humanities, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

Citation of the PhD thesis: 
Barnes, Bram Corydon. “The Making of Global Citizenship: Education, Liberal Internationalism, and Negotiating Worldmaking in the Globalizing 20th Century.” PhD thesis, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 2026.
Access:
An abstract of the PhD thesis is available on the Geneva Graduate Institute’s repository. As the thesis itself is embargoed until January 2029, please contact Dr Barnes for access.

Banner image: AYO Production / Shutterstock.
Interview by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.