Volunteers occupy a crucial but fundamentally problematic position within the global refugee response. It’s time we bring that discussion into the open.

Trapped on a Greek island for more than 300 days, the story of a Syrian refugee's peaceful protest against Europe's oppressive border regime.

While European leaders continue to hail the EU-Turkey deal – under which refugees arriving in Greece since March are threatened with deportation – its human toll ruins the lives of thousands.

In much of the gushing coverage of Brittan's legacy little mention is made of his role in breaking open the EU to business demands - TTIP is the latest stage of that project.

By failing to contextualise the Gaza assault the media helps embed a kind of official ignorance - much of the British public have no idea what is actually happening, or why.

This opening paper of the workshop, Creating publics, Creating democracies (see this week's theme) explores the elusive nature of ‘the public’ in relation to global governance and global civil society; how it is being appropriated, invoked, silenced, and excluded in contemporary politics as well as invested with the alternative imaginaries of a more democratic future