Since its creation in 2018, the Obama Foundation Scholars program has brought emerging architects of change from around the globe to Columbia University for a year of education and training. During their year in New York, the Scholars develop and hone skills that will bolster their efforts to tackle urgent issues – from environmental protection to post-conflict resolution, equitable development to access to education – on local, regional, and global levels.

As such, the trajectory of the Obama scholars, individually and as a population, will be of serious interest to historians, social scientists, and public audiences in future years. With this in mind, INCITE has launched the Obama Scholars Global Leadership Study, which seeks to trace and understand the paths of the Obama Scholars after they leave Columbia. Completed across ten years, the study will create an archive of interviews with cohorts during their introductory year at Columbia, and follow-up interviews at two-year, five-year and ten-year intervals. The records created from these interviews will further enable investigation into the transnational networks of collaboration that develop among and across program cohorts, and into the substantive effects of Columbia’s on-campus program on Scholars’ efforts to craft solutions to real-world problems. In the process, the study will create an enduring archive at Columbia of the life and leadership trajectories of the Scholars, at a time when engagement across borders is increasingly under duress.