The Magazine
Global Brief is a top-tier international affairs magazine with a heavy global readership. It was founded in 2009. Based in Toronto and publishing quarterly in print and online out of the Institute for 21st Century Questions, GB features the original works of leading and rising-star writers on world affairs writ large – international strategic and politics, business, science, culture, movements and trends.
GB has no moral mandate. It is not Anglospheric. It is not sensationalist. Nor is it fatalistic. Rather, it seeks to analyze and explain the world in all its bald complexities, to anticipate different ‘strategic futures,’ and to reflect – with policy relevance and nuance – on ways to address these complexities. GB is read around the world, in multiple languages, by prime ministers, presidents and CEOs to lay citizens and students, and so GB seeks to move a very demanding readership (and decision-makers in all countries and spheres) to better and deeper understanding and, where possible, to practical solutions to inelegant problems.
The cutting-edge, critically acclaimed, highly eclectic print version of GB publishes approximately four times per year in English and French. Each issue of GB is heavily curated, edited and fact-checked and, to be sure, beautiful on the strength of original art and world-beating art direction. Each number consists of a wide and original array of first-class essays (Features); synoptic briefings (One Pager); follow-up analyses and enquiries (Query); in-theatre reports (In Situ); point-counterpoint, head-to-head debates (Nez à Nez); kinetic interviews (Tête à Tête); surveys of premier global thinkers on key questions (The Definition) and on the world to come (Strategic Futures); and, finally, levity through mock dialogues of a given government’s Cabinet Room, as well as an evocative Epigram.
GB regularly publishes top writers and thinkers from around the world, including, among many others: Steven Pinker, Lloyd Axworthy, Kishore Mahbubani, Bilahari Kausikan, Louise Arbour, Aharon Barak, Hubert Védrine, Kevin Rudd, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Chrystia Freeland, Noam Chomsky, Felipe Calderon, Andrey Kortunov, Fyodor Lukyanov, Navi Pillay, Shashi Tharoor, Abdou Diouf, Olusegun Obasanjo, Roméo Dallaire, Jan Egeland, John Kay, Louise Fréchette, Yuriy Romanenko, John de Chastelain, James Orbinski, Margaret MacMillan, Martin Wolf, Geoff Mulgan, Michael Ignatieff, Benjamin Ferencz, Alvaro de Soto, Hernando de Soto, Fareed Zakaria, Ramesh Thakur, John Polanyi, Philippe Kirsch, Hassan Ben Talal, Jean Charest, John Howard, C. Raja Mohan, Dominic Barton, Kanti Bajpai, Jon Finer, Irina Starodubrovskaya, Vladimir Mau, Michael Byers, John E. McLaughlin, Mark Kingwell, Joseph Heath, Roberta Jamieson, George Elliott Clarke, Ngaire Woods, Nathalie Tocci, Jennifer Welsh, Hugh White, Parag Khanna, David Malone, Gérard Bouchard, Ward Elcock, Andrew Coyne, Bob Rae, John Ralston Saul, Alex Himelfarb and Whitney Lackenbauer.
GB has also been a key global platform (and, in some cases, incubator) for some of today’s rising stars in international affairs analysis and commentary, including Jeremi Suri, Barthélémy Courmont, Frédéric Charillon, Frédérick Gagnon, Yauheni Preiherman, Michael Cotey Morgan, Miloud Chennoufi, Sinem Akgul Acikmese and Zachary Paikin.
GB’s new, popular website, www.globalbrief.ca, builds on the content of the physical magazine with multilingual expert analytical blogs (GB Geo-Blogs) to encourage high-level world affairs debates and discussions beyond conventional global linguistic barriers. These Geo-Blogs regularly bring many thousands of otherwise ‘untouchable’ readers from around the planet, from mother countries and diasporic communities alike, to www.globalbrief.ca. The site also has regular GB videos and micro-lectures on a wide array of current topics in national and international politics and policy, an editor’s blog, GB’s social media feeds across several platforms, and the entire archive of GB’s award-winning art.
Distribution of the prestigious print version of GB includes in-store sales in top stores in Canada (Chapters/Indigo), the US and a half dozen other countries, from Singapore to Brazil, Germany, and South Africa, a global paid subscriber base, as well as elite carriage in Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounges at airports around the world and at top conferences and events on all continents.
