Global Development Institute Blog

Eleven academics from the Global Development Institute are helping to convene seven panels at the annual DSA conference in September. The 2017 Development Studies Association Conference will be held at the University of Bradford from the 6-8th September and will focus on Sustainability interrogated: societies, growth, and social justice and will feature.

Professor David Hulme, Executive Director of the Global Development Institute, will also deliver the President’s Valedictory lecture.

For full details of each session and to proposed a paper, click on the title.

Urban livelihoods for the next generation: Youth, employment insecurity and future expectations

Convenor: Nicola Banks (University of Manchester)

Urban youth face enormous employment challenges, with many left to their own devices in job creation. What are the repercussions of this for young people in livelihoods security and future expectations? How can we help young people access sustainable livelihoods and meet goals of inclusive urban development?

Production networks, value chains and shifting end markets: implications for sustainability

Convenors: Aarti Krishnan (University of Manchester), Judith Krauss (University of Manchester), Khalid Nadvi (University of Manchester), Stephanie Barrientos (University of Manchester)

Given diverse understandings of what sustainability is and what it may constitute across global and regional production networks and value chains, there is a need to rethink what the polysemic concept means in terms of tensions, trade-offs and implications for stakeholder agency and governance.

Negotiating the politics of social protection: Global, national, local

Convenors: Sam Hickey (University of Manchester), Tom Lavers (University of Manchester)

This panel will examine the negotiated nature of social protection policymaking from global and regional levels, to the national and local. The panel aims to bring together research on the forms of politics that matter at each level, including struggles over ideas as well as material interests.

Rising powers: shapers and re-shapers of sustainable development? [Rising Powers SG]

Convenors: Rory Horner (University of Manchester), Lidia Cabral (Institute of Development Studies), Emma Mawdsley (University of Cambridge)

Rising power states, firms and civil society organisations lead a wider group of increasingly influential southern actors shaping global (un)sustainable development. These sessions explore the various channels through which these various actors may shape and re-shape sustainable development.

Planning for Sustainable Development Goals: New Thinking and Emerging Practices

Convenor: David Hulme (University of Manchester)

The papers look at how countries in the Global South craft national development plans to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. They focus on the rationalities underpinning this ‘New National Development Planning’ and the sets of processes, policies and practices that come with it.

Achieving inclusive urban development through scaling up participatory and co-productive plan

Convenors: Diana Mitlin (University of Manchester), Philipp Horn (The Open University)

This panel aims to critically explore approaches on scaling up the effective modalities of participatory and co-productive neighbourhood planning to the city level, and in so doing seeks to strengthen the critical mass of people-centred approaches supporting inclusive and sustainable urban development.

Dissonance and development: ethical dilemmas, psychology and sustainability in development assistance

Convenors: Pablo Yanguas (University of Manchester), Tom Goodfellow (University of Sheffield)

Development aid is intrinsically morally complex, giving rise not only to debates on the ethics and politics of aid but to individual psychological experiences of cognitive dissonance. At a time of mounting pressure on the sector, this panel explores these issues in inter-disciplinary perspective.