International Institute Generative Theme Initiative
January 2025 – December 2025

A global entanglement of political, economic, and environmental crises has become increasingly ubiquitous over the last few decades. It has given rise to nativism, authoritarianism, populism, and militarism, often targeting international students and researchers, as well as vulnerable diasporic communities. At the same time, we are witnessing the renewal of grassroots and social movements that mobilize community resources to support well-being and to lessen dependency on the political winds of the moment. By fostering meaningful ties across difference (national, ethnic, racial, gendered, or class), such efforts forge proactive solidarities that rest on a collective sense of agency and responsibility. Similarly, universities and cultural institutions around the country are pursuing praxis-oriented research that critically and reflexively interrogates taken-for-granted forms of knowledge production and that centers community interests. Such community-engaged research frameworks have become integral to many disciplines.

This collaborative initiative showcases the democratic potential of equitable and enduring engagements between “glocal” communities and researchers who sustain proactive transnational networks of solidarity. More than ever, we need collaborative, interdisciplinary knowledge production and mobilization in alliance with those who occupy categories that are socially and geopolitically constructed as being marginal at a local or global scale. Urgent topics range from book banning, science denialism, sidelining of academic expertise and erosion of academic freedom to threats to immigrants/refugees, the potential end of DACA, and the growing ethnonationalist sentiments in democracies worldwide.

Through a quarterly series of roundtables, workshops, lectures or performances, this initiative brings together different stakeholders (community members/organizations, students, researchers, and staff members) who are engaged in international efforts to learn from one another, to break out of academic and non-academic silos, to forge common and generative frameworks of transnational solidarity, and to bring about interdisciplinary modes of knowing through research, teaching, and learning (e.g. community engagement practice and other frameworks).

For questions and suggestions, please contact:

• Inmaculada García-Sánchez, Professor, School of Education & Information Studies; Community Engagement Advisor, International Institute (igarcias@gseis.ucla.edu)


• David D. Kim, Professor, Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies; Associate Vice Provost, International Institute (dkim@international.ucla.edu)


• Shaina Potts, Associate Professor, International Institute and Department of Geography; Equity Advisor, International Institute (spotts@geog.ucla.edu)