This article critically examines the creation of the dominant academic discourse of global citizenship education, highlights gaps of thinking in the current discourse based on empirical research, and suggests some of the areas of translation/mediation/engagement that exist or need to exist in order to further research in the area. It uses a literature-mapping exercise to analyse the politics of knowledge production in the field of global citizenship education, and introduces results of an international questionnaire study to explore university students' concepts of global citizenship. (Contains 1 note.)