Development studies in the age of AI: what should we teach, and what kinds of graduates do we need?
Artificial intelligence is transforming development practice, university education and graduate work. Development studies must respond not by chasing technological novelty, but by strengthening its distinctive capacity to interrogate power, inequality, ethics and institutional change.
GDI at the DSA Conference 2026
Many academics and postgraduate students from across GDI are heading to Dublin next week to take part in this year’s Development Studies Association Conference. Hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Development at University College Dublin, the hybrid event will bring together hundreds of delegates to discuss the topic ‘Reimagining Development: Power, Agency, and Futures in an Uncertain World’.
Looking for absences in global development
By Daniela Cocco Beltrame and Teklehaymanot Weldemichel
Emancipation from the oppressions humans have inflicted on one another is, necessarily, collective. There is no individual escape route. As the often-cited words attributed to Lilla Watson remind us: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” This is not a polite invitation but a political and philosophical demand that development studies as a field has too often failed to meet.
Global Poverty Reduction Revisited: Good News and Bad News on Societal Poverty Trends
by David Hulme and Saumik Paul
New data and recently developed measures (defined in Box 1) make it possible to reassess what has been happening with global poverty reduction since the end of the Cold War and to consider future prospects. Our analysis confirms one well-known finding (the good news); deepens the understanding of a second trend that was to be expected; and identifies a third trend that is extremely worrying (the bad news).
Call for Papers: Towards a Global South-Driven Future for Development Studies
First Workshop in Indonesia (TBC: April 2027)
Convenors
Pritish Behuria (University of Manchester), Arief Anshory Yusuf (Padjadjaran University), Sebeka Plaatje (University of South Africa), Elvis Avenyo (University of Johannesburg) and Andy Sumner (King’s College London).
Background
Since its inception, development studies has appeared to be in perpetual crisis. The current geopolitical moment, as well as reductions in foreign aid, has contributed to these old discussions resurfacing. Despite what may seem to be uncertainty about the future of the field, new development studies programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level have proliferated globally. There are also issues of consistent knowledge divides where the ‘Future of the Development Studies’ continues to be debated in North America and Europe yet the voices of the Global Majority, especially those residing in Asia and Africa remain hidden from sight.
What kind of academic personas are necessary for research to lead to transformation?
In her opening session for Research for Transformation Lab week in November 2025, GDI’s Diana Mitlin reflected on five academic personas and their possibilities for transformative research: the shining superstar, the convenor, the subversive persona, the collaborative co-producer, the shapeshifter.
The following is a transcription of a new podcast, where we follow the recording of Diana’s reflections with a conversation between two of GDI’ researchers, Smith Ouma and Elisa Gambino. Ellie and Smith react to these personas through their own experiences and situate them in the current higher education and academic system of knowledge production. We hope you enjoy their reflections.
The Work Beneath the Work
Written by: Mariana Hernández Montilla, Anuradha Ganapathy,
Krishna Das, Maria Pampaka, Sandra Barragán & Helen Underhill
29 April 2026 · Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
Before you read, take a moment. Think of one relationship that holds your own work together. Keep it in mind as you go. Close the essay by looping back to it
Interview: Heather Alberro on Terrestrial Ecotopias
In Terrestrial Ecotopias, Heather Alberro, Lecturer in Sustainability at the Global Development Institute, invites readers to imagine futures that break away from the fatalism of our current moment. Blending literary analysis, activist histories, and Indigenous futurism, she explores how more‑than‑human worlds might flourish beyond the confines of the ‘Capitalocene’.
Collaborative research on urban social movements wins Making a Difference Award
GDI PhD researcher Dani Cocco Beltrame and 25 co-researchers from the Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) federation have been recognised in The University of Manchester’s annual Making a Difference awards.
Selective Outrage Is Not Neutral – In memory of Hamid Khalafallah
by Dilek Celebi, Honorary Research Fellow
Hamid was not asking for sympathy. He was demanding attention for his people. Most of the world chose the easier option.
He is gone now. And what makes that loss unbearable is not only grief—it is the specific anger of watching someone fight for visibility that never fully arrived. Hamid was a Sudanese academic who documented his country’s war not from a conference room but from his own garden, holding spent bullets in his hands. He was not analysing catastrophe. He was living inside it, as one of millions displaced by a conflict that the world had already decided it could afford to monitor from a distance.