Barrie Axford is Professor Emeritus in Politics at Oxford Brookes University, UK, where he is also a member of the Centre for Global Politics Economy and Society (GPES).

Alistair Brisbourne is a Research Manager at accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP, UK.

Claudia Lueders is a Teaching Fellow in Politics at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Sandra Halperin is a Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.

Introduction: The Importance of the 'Cultural Encounter' Part I: Encounters Beyond Borders 1. What is a Border Comrade? 2. Seeing from the Border with Chris Rumford: Towards Cosmopolitan Borders and a Multiperspectival Border Studies 3. Politics of Space, Strangeness and Culture in the Global Age Part II: Everyday Encounters and Strangeness 4. The Complex Trajectories of the Commoner: Cosmopolitanism, Localisation and Nationalism 5. Artistic Encounters with Difference, Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism and the Political Imagination 6. The Story of the Ship-in-a-bottle: Encountering Strangeness and Familiarity through a Globalised Object 7. Don't Look Back in Anger: A reflection on strangeness and borders in academia Part III: Global Studies and Interdisciplinarity [...]ope in Crises: Europe's Others and Other Europes from a Global Perspective 9. Globalization: Interactive and Integral 10. Cosmopolitan Borders, Strangeness, and Inter-Cultural Encounters 11. Religion and Globalising Processes: An Investigation into the Relationship between Religious Practices and Institutions and the Complex Historical Forms of Global Social Change 12. Challenges of Globalization and the Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Implications of the Anthropocene