Global Development Institute Blog

Academics from the Global Development Institute are convening a number of panels and giving a lot of papers at the annual Development Studies Association conference taking place 27-29th June at The University of Manchester. This year’s theme will be Global Inequalities and will challenge the traditional geographies of development, and demand investigation of the power relations that generate wealth and poverty within and between countries and regions. Conference panels will also emphasise the many dimensions of inequality, including gender, class, climate, race and ethnicity, region, nationality, citizenship status, age, (dis)ability, sexuality, and religion and the ways these reinforce or counteract each other. To see all the panels and papers visit DSA website.

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Below is the full list of panels and papers being delivered by researchers from The University of Manchester. For full details of each session, click on the title.

Unequal legacies? The politics of the Green Revolution and South-South technology transfers in Africa

Convenors: Lidia Cabral (Institute of Development Studies), Divya Sharma (University of Sussex), Tom Lavers (The University of Manchester)

The panel will consider attempts to promote a ‘new’ Green Revolution in Africa, focusing on: the transfer of transnational policy ideas—including South-South transfers; the adoption and adaptation of these ideas in particular national political economies; and their distributional impacts.

Papers

Opportunities and challenges of ‘farmer-led’ irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa – Philip Woodhouse (The University of Manchester)

 

Development leadership, wicked problems and global inequalities

Convenor:  Kelechi Ekuma, (The University of Manchester), Rory Stanton (The University of Manchester), Jaco Renken (University of Manchester), Violeta Schubert (University of Melbourne)

This interdisciplinary panel will explore the nature and changing contexts of leadership in international development, highlighting the influence of ‘development leaders’ on policy reforms and the resolution of wicked and complex social problems including inequalities.

Papers

Shifts in Development Leadership: From Heroes to Champions – Jaco Renken (The University of Manchester)

 

Digital Inequalities and Development

Convenor: Richard Heeks (The University of Manchester), Mark Graham (University of Oxford), Dorothea Kleine (University of Sheffield)
This panel will cover the relationship between digital technologies and global inequalities: ways in which ICTs may “level the playing field” via pro-equity digital innovations. It will also looks at amplifications and entrenchments of existing inequalities via digital exclusion, harm, asymmetric benefits and adverse incorporation.

Papers

Healthy digital dividends in Indonesia – Gindo Tampubolon (University of Manchester)

 

Everyday practices of inequality

Convenors: Uma Kothari (The University of Manchester), Alex Arnall (University of Reading)
This panel will explore how global inequalities are created, reproduced and potentially transformed at the level of day-to-day, routine life. It will consider how studying people’s everyday social relations, experiences and practices can provide new insights into addressing inequality at different scales.

 

Synergies among social protection schemes for poverty and inequality reduction

Convenors: Francesco Burchi (German Development Institute (DIE), Daniele Malerba (The University of Manchester)
This panel focuses on the interactions among social protection schemes or between them and economic interventions. In particular, it aims to investigate the joint effects of these programs on different dimensions of poverty and on inequality in low- and mid-income countries.

 

Production networks and development in an era of polycentric trade

Convenors: Rory Horner, (The University of Manchester) Khalid Nadvi (The University of Manchester)
As end markets in the global South – and domestic and regional value chains – have grown, a pattern of polycentric trade has emerged. Building on earlier research on North-South value chains, this session explores prospects for development in the context of multiple, overlapping value chains.

 

The Political Economy of Industrial Policy and State-Business Relations in the 21st Century

Convenors: Nicolai Schulz (LSE), Pritish Behuria (The University of Manchester)
This panel will examine the politics of industrial policy and state-business relations in late developing countries in the 21st century.

Papers

The Politics of Big Business in Kenya – Pritish Behuria (University of Manchester)

Beyond the neoliberal-statist divide: a political settlements reading of Kenya’s M-Pesa success story – Matthew Tyce (University of Manchester)

 

Deindustrialisation in the Global South: Inequality, work and urban transformation

Convenors: Seth Schindler, Nicola Banks, Tom Gillespie (The University of Manchester)
This panel focuses on the drivers of deindustrialisation in cities in the global South, and its impacts at the urban scale on labourers, work and the built environment. Taken together, the papers will highlight emergent patterns of uneven development, inequality and income (re)distribution

Papers

The New International Geography of Deindustrialization – Seth Schindler (University of Manchester)

 

Value chains and production networks: reducing or reproducing inequalities?

Convenor: Judith Krauss (The University of Manchester), Bimal Arora (Aston Business School), Stephanie Barrientos (The University of Manchester)
As global, regional and local value chains and production networks rise in importance in international trade, there is a need to analyse to what degree they reduce or reproduce inequalities in social, economic and environmental terms across stakeholders and space.

 

The Global Governance of Inequalities

Convenor: Karen Buckley (The University of Manchester)
This panel critically engages with the global governance of inequalities, capturing global level action and contestation on the environment, climate change and trade. It considers issues of legitimacy, justice and sustainability in relation to global governance and brings together a focus on the structures of international law, the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and World Trade Organization (WTO). Individual papers examine sites and modalities of climate contestation at the United Nations and beyond; situate International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) such as Greenpeace in relation to changing balances of power in international politics; and analyse the current development round of negotiations at the WTO.

Papers

Climate Contestation: The Road through Marrakech – Karen Buckley (The University of Manchester)

 

Many dimensions of Inequalities in China

Convenor: Xiaobing Wang (The University of Manchester)
This paper panel will examine the experiences and lessons from China in combating many dimentional of inequalities. It aims for a synergy of some high quality papers and will encourage the exchange of ideas among scholars

 

New perspectives on emerging donors: anxieties, intellectual histories, and hybrid identities [Rising Powers SG] (Paper)

Convenor: Jamie Doucette (University of Manchester) Soyeun Kim (Sogang University)

This session interrogates the ‘alternative’ nature of emerging donors and South-South development cooperation. We highlight new research from variety of inter-disciplinary perspectives, with a focus on intellectual histories, affective registers, conceptual interrogation, and networks of power.

Papers

Development cooperation as Corporate Social Responsibility: The Case of South Korean Chaebols in international development – Farwa Sial (SOAS), Jamie Doucette (University of Manchester) & Joonhwa Cho (SOAS, University of London)

Triangular Cooperation for Disaster Risk Reduction: the Case of Japan, Chile, and Latin America – Chika Watanabe (University of Manchester)

 

Women’s inequalities and global progress in work: access, dignity, decency of women’s work (Paper)

Convenor: Shoba Arun (Manchester Metropolitan University), Wendy Olsen (University of Manchester)

This panel explores the social, economic and cultural basis of differences in the work experience of women. South Asian women’s labour supply may be declining in some industries: how is this differentiated? How do economic inequality and ethnic divisions affect women’s time-use?

Papers

Tackling social norms: Jordanian women and non-traditional work – Lina Khraise (University of Manchester)

Time-Use, Marital Negotiations and Tensions About Work: Comparing Rural India and Bangladesh – Wendy Olsen (University of Manchester), Sahida Khondaker (BRAC University), Sohela Nazneen (University of Sussex), Maheen Sultan (Brac Institute of Governance and Development)

 

Pressing pause on the gender agenda in disaster studies: learning from critical gender and development studies (Paper)

Convenor: Jenna de Lopez (University of Manchester), Gemma Sou (University of Manchester)

This panel discusses the critiques of gender and development (GAD) to interrogate how gender is conceptualised and operationalised in disaster management, with the aim of avoiding similar errors in the new trend to include gender inequalities in disaster management contexts.

 

Digital entrepreneurship and global inequality (Roundtable)

Convenor: Brian Nicholson (University of Manchester), Boyi Li (University of Exeter), John Dobson (Clark University), Chrisanthi Avgerou (London School of Economics)

This roundtable panel will focus on digital entrepreneurship that inspires an optimistic expectation that rural poverty might be mitigated by a new digital economy. Cases from Mexico and China explore the limitations of overcoming inequality with digital infrastructure and policy measures needed.

 

Donor responses to insecurity and global inequalities (Paper)

Convenor: Ivica Petrikova (Royal Holloway) & Melita Lazell (University of Portsmouth)

This panel explores whether and how donor interventions reflecting the securitization of development reduce or exacerbate global inequalities. Further, it examines whether short-term aid programmes undermine sustainability at the expense of donors’ security priorities.

Papers

Foreign Aid to respond to immigration concerns: does more aid reduce irregular migration flows to Italy? – Gabriele Restelli (University of Manchester)

 

Reinventing the Gender Wheel: what does a gendered approach to disaster management need to avoid?

Convenor: Jenna Murray de Lopez (University of Manchester)

This panel discusses the established critiques of GAD to interrogate how gender is conceptualised in disaster management settings, with the aim of pressing pause and reflecting upon how the reproduction of inequalities and the feminisation of disaster response can be avoided.

 

Critical junctures of change: comparative subnational politics, spatial inequalities and development (Paper)

Convenors: Vasudha Chhotray (University of East Anglia), Anindita Adhikari (Brown University)

This panel calls for papers that examine how critical political junctures such as territorial reorganization, political regime change or new forms of subaltern resistance amongst others produce variations in development trajectories in subnational units either across time or space or both.

Papers

Natural gas revenue sharing in the Andes: In what sense reducing spatial inequalities?  – Felipe Irarrazaval (University of Manchester)

 

From inclusive cities via vibrant public spaces to sustainable development: A leap of faith or a leap too far? (Hybrid combining: paper + policy and practice panel)

Convenors: Flavio Comim (University of Cambridge and UFRGS), Shailaja Fennell (University of Cambridge), Sudhir Chella Rajan (Indian Institute of Technology), Joe Ravetz (University of Manchester), PB Anand (University of Bradford)

This British Academy research based panel has 4 sessions: 1. From unequal cities to inclusive and smart development; 2. Space, pace, publicness, and the city of tomorrow; 3. From right to the city to cities for all; and 4. Local North and Global South: cities in Brexit and the Northern Powerhouse.

Papers

‘Smart-wise cities’ in India: mapping the collective intelligence in urban transformation – Joe Ravetz (University of Manchester), Jessica Symons (University of Manchester). Mayank Dubey (Xavier University Bhubaneswar), Tathagata Chatterji (Xavier University Bhubaneswar)

 

The dynamics of youth inequalities: aspirations, agency and multidimensional poverty (Paper)

Convenor: Solava Ibrahim (Centre of Development Studies (Cambridge) and Anglia Ruskin University)

The Study Group on Multidimensional Poverty and Poverty Dynamics proposes a panel on youth inequalities in Global South and North. The panel aims to address global inequalities and multidimensional poverty – with a focus on youth aspirations and agency and runs in 2 sessions based on submissions.

Papers

Living in Your Parents’ Shadow: Intergenerational Earnings Aspirations – Cahal Moran (University of Manchester)

 

The roots of inequalities: what matters most early in the life course? (Paper)

Convenor: Paul Dornan (University of Oxford), Gina Crivello (University of Oxford)

This panel will draw on papers exploring lasting effects of early disadvantage. The panel will pose – and seek to answer – the fundamental policy relevant questions of ‘what matters most in the early life course?’ The panel will draw on the rich Young Lives research study and from other relevant research that addresses this question.

Papers

Developmental spaces? Development psychology and urban geographies of youth in Tanzania – Nicola Banks (University of Manchester)

 

What role for the private sector in challenging global inequality? [DSA Business & Development Study Group] (Paper)

Convenor: Jason Hart (University of Bath), Andrew Bowman (University of Edinburgh), Peter Edward (Newcastle University)

Reducing inequality is a Sustainable Development Goal that the private sector should help realise (along with the other SDGs). What does the evidence around public-private partnerships thus far suggest about the role of private sector involvement in addressing inequality within and between nations?

Papers

Between risk and responsibility: Sustainable development in the mining industry – Tomas Frederiksen (University of Manchester)

 

Pharmaceuticals, patents & access to medicines

Convenor: Ken Shadlen (LSE)

Pharmaceuticals can be a vital sector for health as well as industrial development. Yet, vast inequalities are present in terms of access to affordable and effective medicines around the world. Intellectual property protection is hugely significant and controversial in the pharmaceutical sector, and has increased in both scope and duration in much of the global South over the last two decades, mostly driven by Northern interests. While some claim it can promote innovation, enhanced patent coverage has often been a barrier to delay the entry of generic competition. Meanwhile, various other factors in the generic pharmaceuticals also potentially affect access to medicines, including trade regime and regulatory framework, and involve distinct national variations. In some countries, renewed efforts have been made at supporting local production in order to increase domestic capacities to increase access to medicines. This session involves a range of papers which focus on various issues related to pharmaceuticals in the global South, an often overlooked sector within development studies, yet one where significant global inequalities are present.

 Papers

Comparative dynamics of local pharmaceutical production in sub-Saharan Africa – Rory Horner (University of Manchester)

 

Colonial legacies and development studies: contesting discourses and narratives (Roundtable)

Social, economic and environmental dimensions of global inequalities continue to be shaped by (post-)colonial power relations and their entanglements with (white) idea(l)s of modernity, civilization and progress. This roundtable discusses and contests discourses and narratives of colonial legacies.

Chair: Henning Melber (Nordic Africa Institute/EADI)

Speakers:

Uma Kothari (University of Manchester)

Olivia U. Rutazibwa (University of Portsmouth)

 

Reimagining development alternatives (Paper)

Convenor: Richard Friend (University of York), Indrajit Roy (University of York)

New patters of globalisation with emerging ecological pressures, dependence on interconnected social-ecological systems, changing patterns of mobility and migration, and structures and relations of politics and power require reimagining development alternatives from theory to practice.

Papers

Decline and Levelling off of Earnings Inequality: Boon or Bane for a Growing Economy?  – Virgi Sari & Ralitza Dimova (The University of Manchester)

The social justice agenda in development studies: which approach? – Chris Lyon (Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre)

Can there be a moral vision for international development in a time of populism? – Pablo Yanguas (University of Manchester)

 

The political economy of social protection (Paper)

Convenors: Nabila Idris (University of Cambridge), Michael Tribe (University of Strathclyde), Mozammel Huq (University of Strathclyde)

The panel explores the socio-political and economic choices in developing social protection policies in the global South. Covering the issues raised when establishing income transfer systems, it particularly discusses the dynamics of power and interest of multiple stakeholders.

Papers

The political economy of social assistance in sub-Saharan Africa: Power relations, ideas and transnational policymaking – Sam Hickey & Tom Lavers (University of Manchester)

 

Data4Dev: datafication and power in international development (Paper)

Convenors: Silvia Masiero (Loughborough University), Linnet Taylor, Gianluca Iazzolino (London School of Economics and Political Science)

This panel will explore the effects of data on international development, with a focus on the geographies of inclusion and exclusion stemming from datafication. It will examine the new forms of power that datafication creates, and how extant development theories can be extended to make sense of it.

Papers

Big Data and Healthcare Industry: Adoption of Electronic Health Record in Iran – Negar Monazam Tabrizi  (The University of Manchester)

Datafication, Value and Power in International Development: Big Data in Two Indian Public Service Organisations – Richard Heeks (University of Manchester), Vanya Rakesh, Ritam Sengupta (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta), Christopher Foster (University of Sheffield), Sumandro Chattapadhyay (The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India)

 

Migration and the quest for a better life: how people on the move re-shape global development (Paper)

Tanja Bastia  & Tanja Müller (University of Manchester)

People move within and across national borders to escape violence and persecution, for work or for love. Through these movements, they help re-shape the places they move to, those they leave as well as the many places they pass through. Despite different ways of labelling these movements and the people who engage in them, what generally unites their desires is a quest for a better life. This panel will explore the relationship between migration and development from multiple perspectives. Papers will address internal and international migration; labour migration and refugee movements; issues of integration and identity; protest symbolisms by refugees, as well as the changing role that migration plays in policy-making.

Papers

Back to containment development: the latest swing of the migration-development pendulum – Oliver Bakewell (University of Manchester)

Refugees and Protest symbolism: Visual images of solidarity or enforcement of racialised global development history? – Tanja Müller (University of Manchester)

Migration as an act of care – Tanja Bastia (University of Manchester)

 

Health and nutritional outcomes: progress and inequalities

Convenors: Coretta Jonah (University Of The Western Cape), Winnie Sambu (University of Cape Town)

Despite economic growth and development, a reduction in extreme poverty and improvements in access to basic services, poor health and nutritional outcomes continue to affect a significant proportion of people (particularly children) living in developing countries. Also, there are striking disparities in health, nutritional outcomes and access to basic services, across geographical locations and between groups of different socio-economic status. This panel will focus on health and nutrition in a context of increasing global inequalities, and the implications for nutritional outcomes of adults and children. The panel draws on scholarly reviews and quantitative analyses, to discuss the nature and distribution of these inequalities, and some of the key drivers of poor health and nutritional outcomes. It will also consider some of the policies and strategies that can be used to strengthen access to basic services and improve child nutritional outcomes.

Papers

Terrorist violence and newborn health. Estimates for Colombia – Laura Rodriguez (University of Manchester)

 

 

Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole