Celebrating its 20th anniversary year, the Work in Progress in the Social Studies seminar series returns tonight with a lecture to be delivered by Vincenzo Ciccheli from the University of Paris Sorbonne.

The talk will look at the world we live in today as it discusses what is common and what is shared.

“We live in a globalised world: a world where a young person in Burkina Faso can identify with interstellar Star Wars heroes, and in which a New York trader drinks the same Starbucks coffee as his Taiwanese counterpart. How is human experience being shaped in such a world?” Ciccheli writes.

He will explore an investigation that has used two normally-separate scales of analysis to examine the issue, looking at the scale of the cosmopolitan world and its global cultural dynamics on the one hand, and at the scale of everyday life and ordinary socialisation to otherness on the other.

“Society is witnessing the phenomenon of identitarian closure and the rise of xenophobic feelings and discourse, as evidenced by the return of anti-Semitism and the upsurge of Islamophobia […] It is imperative to explore the shape taken by the opening and closing of boundaries at both the macro and micro levels.”

Cicchelli is associate professor at University Paris Descartes and Research Fellow at Gemass (CNRS/Paris Sorbonne). He is currently the series editor of Youth in a Globalizing World (Brill Publishing, Leyden/Boston). His primary research and teaching interests are in global studies, cosmopolitanism, international comparisons and youth conditions in the Euro-Mediterranean area. He is also the author of several published books on the topic.

■ The talk is being held today at 6pm at the Francis Ebejer Hall (Lecture Theatre 2) at the University of Malta in Tal-Qroqq, Msida. A discussion will follow.