The pillars of the Western social order are shaking. Democracy, liberalism, secularism, and globalization – once hailed as the unassailable foundations of progress – now stand on increasingly shaky ground. As societies around the world grapple with economic turmoil, widening wealth disparities, and a planet in peril, the cracks in this grand structure are becoming impossible to ignore. In corporate boardrooms and living rooms alike, uncomfortable questions are bubbling to the surface. Has this system run its course? Is it time to tear up the rulebook and start anew? The status quo of our capitalist societies needs to be questioned.

So how do we approach this question? With an interdisciplinary cohort of more than 50 international fellows, six programs, and individual fellows, all working from various angles to re-think capitalism. Our programs link big-picture questions about markets and global governance to real-world challenges. These include using finance for social good, improving food systems, creating markets that benefit society, and balancing economic growth with environmental limits. Across our fellow groups, we will discuss how much we need to change our current systems and what really counts as progress.

Make sure to join us while we are re-thinking capitalism. Stay informed about our upcoming public events by following us on Instagram and visiting our events page. Don’t forget to read through the end of this Update for all the latest details.

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”, cites Kohei Saito, a political philosopher from Japan. He is our program chair for the program “Beyond Capitalism: War Economy and Democratic Planning”.

“It is important to reimagine the future”, says Kohei. He will work together with a team of five fellows on how to establish a more egalitarian and sustainable society through a democratically structured “war economy” and a corresponding new notion of freedom and progress. “We believed in the myth that the market is the most efficient system”, says Kohei – but the current “business as usual” approach is incapable of providing solutions.

In this fall term, we are excited to welcome Aaron Benanav from Cornell University. Aaron will work on topics such as technological change, unemployment, economic development, critical theory, and alternative economic systems. Stay tuned to the next arrivals!

Imagine a country blessed with abundant natural resources and ideal conditions for food production, yet grappling with a 50% food insecurity rate. This is the reality in Peru, home country to our program chair, José Luis Chicoma. "With all this wealth, we're poor in so many other ways," José Luis poignantly observed during our opening conference.

This paradox is not unique to Peru. Worldwide, billions of people suffer from hunger and poor nutrition, while countless nutritious species remain untapped. Our current food systems, shaped by power imbalances in global politics, markets, and supply chains, prioritize efficiency at the expense of nutrition, environmental sustainability, and social concerns. To create sustainable, healthy and equitable food systems, we need to change power dynamics and embrace biodiversity.

An expert in the field – led by José Luis Chicoma, a former Minister of Production in Peru and Senior Advisor on Global Food Systems for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), our "The Future of Food: Power and Biodiversity" program aims to create sustainable, healthy and equitable food systems by transforming power dynamics and embracing biodiversity.

How can the use of biodiversity enable progressive power shifts in the food system? An interdisciplinary group of five will tackle this issue. We are delighted to welcome María Fernanda Mideros Bastidas, biologist and director of the Agri-Food Systems Research Center at the University of the Andes (Colombia), and Sayed Azam-Ali, who founded Crops For the Future (CFF), the global center for research on the world's underutilized and forgotten crops. Nicolás Rovegno, a fisheries engineer with experience working at the intersection of science, policy, and sustainable development, has just arrived.

Re-thinking capitalism through an African lens: Led by Kenneth Amaeshi, the program “Africapitalism: Shared Entrepreneurship for Economic Development” explores how capitalism can be reimagined to better serve African communities. Africapitalism emphasizes progress, equity, peace, and most importantly, place – recognizing that economic systems should be rooted in and influenced by their local context.

One kindred, one business. We're particularly excited about Kenneth's interest in the One Kindred One Business Initiative (OKOBI) in Imo State, Nigeria. This innovative approach to shared entrepreneurship leverages communal social ties to create self-sustaining communities and address poverty, inequality, and unemployment.

In the fall, we will have Jude Chukwunyere Iwuoha from the University of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Umuagwo, Imo State in Nigeria, and Cima Sholotan, who is the Director of Sustainability and Corporate Communications at IHS Nigeria Limited. We also welcome our junior fellow Donald Amaeshi, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cape Town.

In this era of financialized capitalism, markets have become the invisible hand that shapes our world. But what if we could pull back the curtain on this perplexing force? Together with sociologist Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, we have launched a program to explore this very question: "Futures of Capitalism: Radical Democracy and the Financial Imagination”.

How do the workings of financial markets shape our social reality, and how can practices of speculation and distortion become tools of a radical democratic imagination? Aris, who is Director of the Centre for Capitalism Studies at University College London, has assembled his dream team of six fellows to explore this question.

Meet Homo Speculans: They’re not just observing finance, but exploring how it is creating a new kind of human subject, Homo speculans, which carries with it new progressive political possibilities.

A warm welcome to Kimberly Chong, the first “Futures of Capitalism” fellow to arrive. Kimberly is an anthropologist from University College London with a background in economics. She is interested in the cosmologies of value, inequality and the financial imagination.

In a world incessantly torn apart by conflict, we have to ask the questions: how does victory occur in modern warfare? How is it achieved, and who are the key actors in defining it? As Petar Bojanić notes during our opening conference, victory always carries "the aftertaste of violence, even if the act is reasonable and just." This perspective reframes war not as a celebration, but as a funeral – a somber reminder of the cost of conflict.

Who is behind this important program? The "Bitter Victory" program is led by Petar Bojanić, a philosopher whose research spans the ethics of war, nonviolence, and social theory. We also introduce Sanja Bojanić who is engaged in the philosophy of culture, focusing on contemporary gender, racial, and class issues that intensify social and affective inequalities; Arseniy Kumankov, who specializes in war studies, ethics of war and peace, political and social theory; Yanfei Sun, a sociologist whose latest research includes historical-comparative study of empires and nation-states. Finally, we welcome Svitlana Matviyenko who focuses on information and cyberwar, media and environment, critical infrastructure studies and postcolonial theory.

The planetary crisis is a core concern when re-thinking capitalism. But how do we design and implement the needed global governance reforms to address the planetary emergency? The “Planetary Governance” program, led by Maja Groff, Convenor of the Climate Governance Commission, aims to transform the ambitious proposals of the Climate Governance Commission's report, "Governing Our Planetary Emergency," into actionable reality. We are excited to also welcome our junior fellow Clara Gurresø, a researcher on international climate politics and climate finance, and Andrew Doss, founder of 3DL (Three Degree Living), a governance innovator and strategic convener.

And that’s not even all. We are thrilled to welcome Daniel Halliday who specializes in political philosophy, with a particular focus on markets and various aspects of economic justice; Paul Kottman will work on a book on democracy; Bernhard Pörksen whose research focuses on the mechanisms, dynamics, and conflicts of media communication; Martin Mulsow will work on a deep history of truth and on how intellectual history (and especially the history of the Enlightenment) is affected by the climate crisisAnd: a warm welcome back to Susan Lamb, who is contributing to the Planetary Governance program while also devoting her time to Integrity Initiative International – an important organization we're proud to support.

Support for academics at risk: with our Elkana Fellowships awarded to the Turkish political scientist Zeynep Alemdar and the Polish philosopher Joanna Karolina Malinowska, we want to set an example for supporting researchers who are subject to repression in their home countries.

On 6 October 24, we will participate in a kick-off event for the Hamburg Sustainability Conference. At this event, concrete ideas for resilient food systems will be presented and discussed with leading researchers and political decision-makers. We are delighted to have Dr. Achim Steiner, Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), as our guest. There are still open links, so be quick register via this link.

Join us at the Frankfurt Book Fair! We are excited about the conversation between our program chair Kohei Saito and Yuval Noah Harari on October 16th. They will discuss their books and their respective ideas on how to create a future worth living now. Three days after, on Saturday, we will meet our alumna Akwugo Emejulu, who will be joined by Dominique Haensell of Missy Magazine to talk about "black feminism" in non-fiction as well as in powerful works of fiction.

Democracy first. The edited volume Seeds for Democratic Futures will be published in our publication series THE NEW with contributions from 17 fellows. A public book launch will follow – stay tuned for our next newsletter!