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.
Debating the Future of Global Development at the GDI Conference
Earlier this month, the Global Development Institute held a conference asking, ‘What is the Future of Global Development?’ We welcomed a host of scholars, practitioners, and students from across the world, enjoying lively debate about the critical juncture in which we currently find ourselves. As Professor Sam Hickey noted in his opening conference address, geopolitical ruptures and escalating global crises mean we’re living through a moment of great consequence, with reverberating effects across the development sector. Development dynamics have always been enmeshed in global power structures, something to which our five plenary sessions were closely attuned.
Global Development Institute Master’s Student Field trip to Rwanda: Does Data speak Louder than Words?
Featured image: Visit to local entrepreneur Charles Ashimwe’s fruit tree and vegetable plantation
Between the 21st of March and the 3rd of April 2026, the University of Manchester took Development Studies master’s students on its annual field trip to Rwanda. Rwanda, led by ex-militia leader Paul Kagame, is a small land-locked country in East Africa. Since its tragic 1994 genocide, it has made impressive progress in social and economic development indicators. Successes include: near-universal health insurance coverage; a crackdown on corruption with Rwanda ranked 41 of 180 in 2024 according to the Corruption Perception Index; and high annual GDP growth, reaching almost 9 percent in 2024. Its outlier position in the African context makes Rwanda a particularly interesting case study for Development Studies students. Yet, at the same, Rwanda is regularly critiqued for its authoritarianism. Its long-standing intervention in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo is also blamed for causing regional instability, displacement, and economic exploitation of Congo’s mineral wealth. In March 2026, Rwanda’s involvement led to US sanctions against the Rwandan Defence Force.
If you don’t count, you don’t count: Reflections from a third visit to Rwanda
by Mariana C. Hernández-Montilla
Here I am, once again in Kigali, looking into education and health in Rwanda. People joke that I must be an expert in Rwanda fieldwork because this is my third time coming as a Teaching Assistant. But it is curious how quickly I forget the small things that matter.
In Conversation: Uma Kothari on Stories of Place
To mark the publication of Professor Uma Kothari’s new co-authored book, Stories of Place: Geographies of Meaning, Memory and Connection, we interviewed Uma about the story behind the book and the relationship between stories and the places from which they emerge. In the conversation below, Uma and Louisa Hann, GDI’s Research Communications Officer, discuss everything from the slippery definition of the story to the ethics of storytelling within academic contexts.
Think you can’t change the world? You matter more than ever
Yesterday I was sad to read of even further declines in UK giving over the past year. Today I am furious to hear what UK aid cuts will look like in practice. And if you’re following global development headlines, you might feel the same way.
Such devastating stories are an indictment of where we are and where we’re heading. So let me take my ‘Professor’ hat off and say a little about what we’ve learned in these past days and what that means for some of the most vulnerable populations in the world.
Paul Mosley (05 April 1947 – 18 February 2026) – An Appreciation
It is with great sadness that we report the death of Professor Paul Mosley, Director of the Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM), University of Manchester, from 1986 to 1992. Professor David Hulme, who worked closely with Paul, reflects on his immense contribution to Development Studies.