Multilateral organisations such as the United Nations rely on knowledge and evidence to make decisions on global issues including climate change, education, health and sustainable development. Today, two major changes are transforming how this knowledge is produced and used. On the one hand, artificial intelligence and other digital technologies are rapidly changing how evidence is gathered, analysed and presented. On the other hand decades-long demands to recognise Indigenous, local and other forms of context-relevant knowledge have often been overlooked in international decision-making.

This project investigates how these two developments are changing the way multilateral organisations decide what counts as reliable knowledge, who is recognised as an expert, and how evidence is used in policy. It examines these changes at three levels: across the wider multilateral system, within international organisations themselves, and in the everyday work of the professionals who produce and use knowledge. By combining expertise from international relations, sociology, computer science and science and technology studies, the project seeks to redefine how we understand knowledge in multilateralism, providing new concepts, evidence and tools for analysing—and ultimately strengthening—international cooperation in an era of rapid technological and geopolitical change.