Created in the Department of Geography and Environment at Loughborough University in 1998, and now with major nodes in Loughborough and Leuven, including many contributors from around the world, GaWC has pioneered research into the external relations of cities and continues to advance the agendas of global urban research.
The longevity of the GaWC research approach has been surprising in a rapidly changing world of social science studies with both myriad different urban and global research initiatives and the development of important critiques on how such research should be conceived. Our initial ambitious goal to provide a widely used base for research on globalisation has long been left behind. Thus GaWC is now a global research network that is neither city-focused nor globalisation-focused but is designed to study their critical intersection.
Specifically, GaWC has grown into being the research network for a distinctive approach to understanding globalisation: we concentrate on the role of cities in enabling corporate globalisation through their provision of advanced business services. This is our core research purpose. However it does function as a working stem that connects to related research – such as on multi-nodal city-regions and cities as players in world politics – where we are making specific relevant interventions.