Before building a cooperative, learn to cooperate: ‘Let’s Coop!’, The Cooperative Board Game Experience
When people think about creating a cooperative, they often imagine legal registration, governance structures, business plans, and financing. These are all important steps. But after spending the past few years researching and working alongside cooperatives, I have become convinced that one challenge is often even greater: learning how to cooperate.
Embodied, community-based and collective approaches to migration: practicing decoloniality at the annual IMISCOE conference
by Tanja Bastia, Thais França, Andrea Souto, Felicity Atieno Okoth, Lorena Izaguirre, Satrio Nindyo Istiko
Between 29th and 2nd July, the International Migration Research Network (IMISCOE) held its annual conference in Girona. On the last day of the conference, we gathered for a workshop to discuss how we can move decolonial critiques forward with more embodied, community-based and collective approaches to studying migration. The backdrop to the workshop was the recognition that in today’s political and social climate, migrants, migration, as well as migration scholars are often used as scapegoats for the ongoing crisis of capitalism (Michiel Baas and Nina Glick Schiller).
GDI Digest: Demystifying Development Stories
by Louisa Hann
To state the obvious, the world is a big place. Most of us rely on mainstream news outlets and other popular media to keep abreast of developments across continents and countries. While there’s an abundance of informative, high-quality information available in today’s digital era, it can be tricky to look beyond common narratives that may not tell the whole story about people or places.
Policy Fellowship on The New Geopolitics of Global Governance
A new opportunity has arisen to join the virtual think tank BRICS+ Thinking as a Policy Fellow. Over the course of one year, the successful fellow will be tasked with producing a policy report on the changing nature of global governance, with a particular focus on north-south initiatives. Read on to learn more about the role and how to apply.
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.