The view that international cooperation is critical to achieving progress in research has become commonplace in science policy discourse. There is a growing consensus — rightly so — that cross-border cooperation should not be limited to a narrow circle of nations in the Global North, but that more scientists and stakeholders from underrepresented regions should also be included in these collaborations. This raises the question of how participation can be improved without simply reproducing global inequalities. The global academic landscape is still characterized by deep rifts, with the financial resources for research in the Global North incomparably more robust than those available to the Global South. In addition, there is still a prevalent imbalance in the division of labour in collaborative research projects: prestigious, reputation-enhancing activities such as theory-building frequently take place in the Global North, while the Global South is assigned tacitly ‘simple’ tasks such as data collection. Furthermore, in times of rising authoritarianism and increasing geopolitical tension, politics often stands in the way of international cooperation.