Borders: Looking Beyond Borders - Gracie Mae Bradley

Gracie Mae Bradley in conversation with Gunjan Sondhi

We live in a world which is obsessed with borders. As Gracie Mae Bradley has observed in her book, Against Borders (co-authored with Dr Luke de Noronha), 'Borders divide workers and families, fuel racial division, and reinforce global disparities.' But it seems that they also win votes and provide the impetus for extra-parliamentary political and social movements. We search for ‘tribes’ and groups with which we can identify or feel affinity, but doing so can only be simultaneously exclusionary.

In conversation with the Open University’s Gunjan Sondhi, she will explore if a world without borders is really possible. If it is, what might it look like? And how, in this era of populism, can we possibly work to achieve such an aim?

About Gracie Mae Bradley

Gracie Mae Bradley is a writer, abolitionist, and civil liberties expert. She is former Director of Liberty and Grenfell Testimony Week, and a founding member of the Against Borders for Children campaign.

Gracie is co-author of Against Borders (Verso 2022), with bylines for political writing in the Guardian, the Independent, OpenDemocracy and elsewhere. Gracie’s other works span essay, fiction and poetry, and have been included in many anthologies, such as After Grenfell (Pluto, 2019), Peacetime (Salvage Magazine, 2023), and When This Is Over (Policy Press, 2023).

Gracie is a James McCune Smith Scholar in the DFA Creative Writing Programme at Glasgow University, and teaches as part of the Migrants in Culture Science Fiction Writing workshop. She holds an MSc in Human Rights with distinction from the LSE, and a first-class BA (Hons) in Philosophy & French from Trinity College, Oxford, where she was a Chadwick Scholar.

More about Gracie Mae 

• Web: graciemaebradley.com
• Instagram: @inrelativeopacity
• Substack: gracie mae bradley's newsletter

Buy the book at Waterstones

About Gunjan Sondhi

Gunjan Sondhi is a feminist geographer leading The Open University’s Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice as its Director, and a Senior Lecturer in Geography at the Open University. Her research offers critical insights into gender and migration, with expertise in international students and highly skilled migrants across South and Southeast Asia, North America, the UK, and the EU. She has an extensive publication record, contributes actively to policy dialogues, and collaborates widely across global research networks. Gunjan currently serves on the IMISCOE Board of Directors, shaping international migration scholarship and strengthening global research cooperation.

More about Gunjan 

• Web: gunjansondhi.org
• Web: Open University profile

About the Borders Series

Whether they’re on our maps or in our heads, borders shape how we see the world – and how the rest of the world sees us. This new series, in collaboration with the Open University, asks leading writers and thinkers to explore borders in all their literal or more abstract forms: geographical and political, cultural and linguistic, visible and contested. Across five events – four online and one in person – our speakers will examine how borders are drawn, crossed, defended and imagined, and how they affect lived experience in a world that is simultaneously increasingly interconnected and yet ever more divided.

From global power lines and shifting nations to intimate questions of belonging, migration and identity, the series invites us to think beyond maps, headlines and stereotypes, providing thoughtful and humane discussions about how borders are created, and about how they can be navigated and challenged.