Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is an independent journalist who writes about globalization and the cracks in the nation-state system. Her 2024 book, The Hidden Globe, was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, the New York Times, CBS News and the New Yorker. The Hidden Globe examines the jurisdictions above, between, and beneath nations: the special economic zones that prop up world trade, the polar archipelagos that challenge the definition of national sovereignty, the ships crisscrossing the world flying flags of convenience, and the micro-states rewriting the laws of outer space.
Abrahamian’s first book, The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen (Columbia Global Reports, 2015) investigated the multi-billion dollar market for passports, interrogating what the sale of citizenship means for nomadic billionaires, the stateless poor, and everybody else.
Abrahamian has been the recipient of the Whiting nonfiction grant and the Silvers grant for works-in-progress, and has held fellowships at the University of Michigan, New America and the Remarque Institute. Her work appears regularly in The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications.