Globalizing Knowledge  

Through Globalizing Knowledge, Kennedy explains how intellectuals and their knowledge institutions and networks shape, and are shaped by, global transformations. This cultural political sociology of knowledge and change is informed by his analysis of public engagements around inequality, nationalism, racism, and solidarity across the world, especially in the USA, Europe and Eurasia.  His 2015 book, "Globalizing Knowledge," laid the foundation for a series of other engagements including addresses of Russia's invasion of Ukraine especially in the context of the world's Epoch End. He also continues that work on higher education by rethinking the places of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, alongside racism and decolonizing struggles in the articulation of universities. 

Solidarity and Social Change

Kennedy’s first book concerned the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980-81, but he now returns to the cultural politics and social movements underlying solidarity's translation across different contexts.  This research arc finds expression in three broader collaborations:

• Together with colleagues in Kosova and building on this work, he works to figure how projects around social justice, especially around opposition to violence and restitution for its victims, might realize greater recognition and effect in international policy regimes.
• Together with colleagues across the world, Kennedy focuses on the contest between autocratic practices and democratic struggles. Most recently he collaborated with a group working on autocratic tools, authoritarian networks and democracy’s façade, finding expression in a publication by Kennedy and former Brown University graduate student N. Yasemin Bavbek on the Knowledge Cultural Sociology of StrongMen. Previously, through the Foundation for European Progressive Studies and its partner in the project, Foundation Jean Jaurès, Kennedy participated in international initiatives committed to the development of progressive social change, building on his past work with FEPS around solidarity.
• Together with colleagues in Finland, Poland and the United States Kennedy explores the ways in which different conceptions of love and solidarity might inform political dialogue and social transformation, and how we might rearticulate security with civil society’s cultural politics and democratic resilience at heart. Kennedy continues work with former Brown University graduate student Juho Korhonen on the articulations of security and solidarity by focusing on shifting definitions of security and solidarity in Finland, Estonia, Armenia, Georgia, Poland, and Lithuania. 

Projections of Identity and Transformations of Capacity

In this research arc, Kennedy analyzes and elaborates cultural practices that enable the transformation of human and social capacity.  

1. Recognizing the value of attachment to realize transformation, he has explored his own hometown’s search for grounding through the memorialization of a lost industry, Bethlehem Steel https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/biography/v037/37.1.kennedy.pdf.
2. Together with former Brown University graduate students Prabh Kehal and Laura Garbes, he develops a knowledge cultural sociology addressing how knowledge’s symbols, schemas, institutions, and networks shape the terms of social reproduction and transformations (https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0221.xml?)
3. He is writing about the process and consequence of transformations of self and community through heroic identifications and artistic projections across national and social differences. https://www.aaihs.org/the-black-panther-white-supremacy-and-double-consciousness/
4. Over the last couple years, Kennedy has begun work in contemplative studies, complementing his work teaching about Martial Arts, Culture and Society (plus yoga!), but developing a more general cultural transformational sociology that articulates proprioception and more spiritual awareness of inter-being in social change. His 2025-26 is so dedicated, the beginnings of which might be seen in this interview. 

Spring 2025
Social Forces: An Introduction to Sociology 

Fall 2024
"Power, Knowledge and Justice in Global Social Change" 
"Martial Arts, Culture and Society"

Spring 2024 
"Power, Knowledge and Justice in Global Social Change" 
"Martial Arts, Culture and Society"

Fall 2023
“Cultural Politics and Critical Social Theory”