Some may think that the highly successful and deservedly prestigious existing academic associations concerned with the study of international and world affairs are perfectly adequate for our current needs.
However, a group of scholars currently working and networking across a number of universities and countries believe there is a need for a new and additional association and for the following reasons:

• Globalization processes are inherently multidimensional. Their study demands a central and unambiguous commitment to the importance of drawing upon materials and investigations from a number of disciplines along with an interest in a wide range of themes and concerns. Though few of us can achieve such broad goals solely through our own work, we can try to prioritise such goals while seeking to operate quite deliberately in close proximity to others from similar as well as different backgrounds but who share similar questions and concerns. The GSA was established precisely in order to provide such a forum.
• Understanding globalization also demands new insights that existing associations, with their fundamental commitments to ideas and conceptual tools grounded in intellectual concerns that pre-date globalization, may find it difficult to prioritize or take seriously.
• Our intention is that the GSA will bring together people who are committed to the study of the embryonic but increasingly vibrant, deterritorialised, dangerous as well as challenging, problem-creating as well as problem-solving, transnational networks, communities, cultures, agents / interests and associations – each with its own needs and dynamics – which are also coalescing rapidly to form an emergent global society, polity and economy.
• Thematic concerns can be just as valid as the basis for intellectual activity as a common discipline. In addition to those in the big social science disciplines, individuals with an interest in global issues include scholars in communication studies, ethics, art history, media studies, geography, environmental studies, among others. Given a common commitment to enhancing understanding of global life we believe that scholars from all these disciplines will find an intellectual home by working alongside others in the GSA.

The aims of the GSA.
Without regard to nationality to advance the work of scholars, and other interested parties such as INGOs, who are interested in promoting the creation and dissemination of multi and interdisciplinary knowledge in the social and human sciences concerning global affairs, problems and changes;
To provide a forum for encouraging world-wide exchanges between people working in all fields of research and enquiry related to global studies by organising regular conferences, setting up thematic, national and regional study sub-groupings and by operating in close association with new journals specializing in global themes: ‘Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs’, ‘Globalizations’ and the ‘Journal of Global Ethics’.
To facilitate the emergence of world-wide federation of quasi-independent academic but linked groupings which all share the same interests and scholarly research programmes involving globalization in all its different aspects.