by Louisa Hann
In these times of economic and geopolitical upheaval, global development issues have been making frequent headlines. In recent months, for example, we’ve seen the controversial opening of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (an infrastructural project explored at length in Tom Lavers’ recent open access book, Dams, Power, and the Politics of Ethiopia’s Renaissance), devastating flooding in Pakistan impacting its agriculture and economy, the decimation of aid programmes such as USAID (as discussed in our webinar co-hosted with the Development Studies Association), and the continued struggles of Palestinians (an issue explored in depth in a recent conference organised by the GDI Students for Palestine group).
While news outlets hungry for the latest scoop often move on swiftly, research institutions such as GDI help keep vital conversations going and draw attention to many of the world’s underreported injustices. To give you a taste of how our academics are working behind and beyond the news, we’ve put together a small selection of their interests and project focuses that are frequently overlooked, neglected, or misunderstood in the wider public sphere.
The complex geopolitics of development
The dismantling of USAID has attracted much concern, condemnation, and calls for action. For some, the cuts threaten the US’s ‘soft power’ and, by extension, the very stability of the global hegemonic order – but these actions do not exist in a vacuum.
In a recent episode for the Second Cold War Observatory podcast – headed up by Jessica DiCarlo and GDI’s Seth Schindler – global governance expert Jack Taggart situates recent aid upheavals within a broader context of geopolitical recalibration. As Taggart explains, the fortunes of development aid have fluctuated over recent decades, with contemporary political tides tending to pitch foreign aid in direct opposition to domestic need, however erroneously. Faith in foreign aid as a public good has been eroding, with some governments approaching aid less as a means to correct past injustices and more as a means to derisk international capital investments.
Such developments should also be understood in the context of China’s growing global influence. China’s development aid systems have historically operated differently to those of Western powers, favouring infrastructural deals over ‘soft’ forms of investment such as health and education. In 2021, however, Xi Jinping announced the multilateral Global Development Initiative, signalling greater ambitions to shape the wider global development agenda and nurture strategic alliances, especially when the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) hit their 2030 deadline.
With the Trump administration having denounced the SDGs and alternative Western leadership almost completely absent, questions remain as to the form development cooperation will take in coming years, as well as the extent to which geopolitical shifts will influence aid delivery. While the short-term future may look grim for development aid, Taggart notes that its shifting geography leaves open the possibility for global solidarity and a more just aid system.
For Pritish Behuria, such solidarity can be found in structuralist arguments that underline the importance of foreign aid in ‘correcting the balance-of-payment disequilibria that characterised late development in former colonies’. Laying out his argument in a discussion paper for the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, Behuria points towards factors such as a neoliberal counterrevolution that made aid provision conditional on recipient countries liberalising financial markets and dropping trade barriers, as well as more recent shifts to ‘universalise’ development in a way that flattens material disparities between the Global North and Global South.
While recognising the relatively marginal position of structuralism in development scholarship, Behuria underlines the continued importance of aid in addressing inequalities suffered by late developing countries: ‘Given that it may not be available, governments are likely to borrow elsewhere. In some cases, this may be on financial markets, which would be significantly risky. For our part, as academics, we should create spaces for more receptivity of discussions about the continued salience of structuralist arguments, given the potential of increasing North-South inequalities in the future.’
GDI’s Teklehaymanot Weldemichel and Smith Ouma are similarly concerned with the potential persistence of global structural inequalities. As the world order shifts and multilateral peace-making efforts flounder, their recent blog asks how African states can protect themselves from further wealth extraction by external actors. Our authors posit the current era as one of both danger and potential, citing the need for a Pan-African solidarity that ‘must insist upon genuine self-determination, foster transnational coalitions, and reject transactional politics that reduce entire nations and peoples to mere bargaining chips.’
Of course, development practitioners themselves have a significant role to play in shaping a more just future for aid and development. To help capture the rapid pace of change, GDI is running a project to platform the voices of our alumni who have been working in a volatile sector. In coming months, we’ll hear from former students around the world and at different career stages about how they’re adapting. Keep an eye on our blog, podcast, and YouTube channels for our first instalments!
Further reading and resources
- Blog: ‘Reflections on building resilience in the development sector’ – Confronted with declining budgets, job insecurity, and a litany of emergency situations, such roles require significant resilience and adaptability in the here and now – something GDI Senior Lecturer Natalie Cunningham has been addressing in a recent microcredential series titled ‘Developing Resilience in Turbulent Times’. This blog explores the course’s success and how participants will take their knowledge into the future.
- Blog: ‘Social protection in the South: Rise and Fall?’ by Armando Barrientos – In this article, GDI’s social protection expert Armando Barrientos examines the current state of social protection programmes in the Global South. He also asks whether authoritarians will undermine social assistance’s rules-based model.
- Article: ‘Flexible embeddedness: how Chinese lead firms internationalise in Africa’ by Elisa Gambino and Costanza Franceschini – Shifting geopolitical power dynamics have prompted lively debates that extend far beyond the question of development aid, especially surrounding the rise of China. This open access article introduces the concept of ‘flexible embeddedness’ to help us understand how Southern firms are shaping contemporary economic globalisation, reframing internationalisation’s ‘rules of the game’ against a background of unequal power relations in South-South engagement.
The invisibilisation of starvation and human rights violations
Millions of people face famine and acute malnutrition in 2025, with many regions experiencing such crisis due to conflict and violence. While most Western news outlets have paid at least some attention to mass starvation in Gaza and Sudan, some humanitarian crises have gone virtually unreported.
As GDI’s Teklehaymanot Weldemichel examines alongside co-author Birhan Gebrekirstos Mezgbo in a report for the World Peace Foundation’s Famine Voices project, the war which ravaged Ethiopia’s Tigray region between 2020 and 2022 left behind stories of extreme hunger and deprivation in its wake. As Weldemichel underlined in a recent paper on the war in Tigray, the Ethiopian government and its allies maintained a “zone of invisibility” around widespread atrocities against Tigrayans, including mass rapes, ethnic cleansing, and mass detentions.
While public consciousness surrounding these atrocities and consequent hunger and displacement has somewhat increased in recent months, narratives have largely focused on rural famine and the struggles of internally displaced persons. As Weldemichel and Mezgbo point out in their report, many have overlooked ‘the acute yet silent starvation that gripped urban professionals – civil servants, schoolteachers, university faculty, salaried workers reliant on bank accounts, and pensioned retirees.’ As such, humanitarian responses largely overlooked these middle-income constituencies, in part due to the ways in which their hunger unfolded behind closed doors – ‘no skeletal figures, no dusty camps, no dramatic photos.’
As the authors conclude, the Tigrayan experience highlights some of the ways in which conventional humanitarian frameworks aren’t fit for purpose, overlooking populations that don’t fall into neat parameters of suffering. Similarly, conventional narratives often overlook the ways in which populations can be starved, neglected, and humiliated after a ceasefire deal has been signed. As the report underlines, the Ethiopian regime continues to target Tigrayans, halting imports and aid to the region – a situation that warrants urgent international attention.
Lesser-known stories of migration and ageing populations
Many Global North countries are experiencing demographic ageing and historically low fertility rates that have prompted warnings of impending economic and social care crises. At the same time, far right movements within those countries are gaining ground, speciously blaming migrants for everything from falling living standards to violent crime rates.
Given how anti-migrant propaganda has seeped into mainstream political discourses in places like the UK, it’s no surprise justice-minded thinkers are focused on rebutting such harmful narratives. The potential for migration to address labour shortages and mitigate crises of elder care represents well-argued ground, for example. Beyond the Global North context, however, lies a host of underreported migration trends and stories impacting the lives of older people.
As GDI’s Tanja Bastia emphasises in her new open access book, Diverse Transnational Care: Ageing and Migration in Bolivia, co-authored with Claudia Calsina, there has been little focus within the academic literature about ageing outside the Global North, especially in relation to migration and the lives of migrants’ parents. Focusing on Bolivia and the ‘stayers’ whose children have migrated, the book takes an intersectional look at how care takes place across borders (also known as transnational care).
As the authors emphasise, remittances play an important role in supporting older people in lower- and middle-income countries, filling the gaps left by weak and non-existent state services. However, as the research demonstrates, levels of transnational care available to older people are mediated by class, gender, and ethnicity, with many having to work well into their senior years. While transnational care dynamics differed in various ways across regions, the book underscores the urgent need to look beyond the Global North context and address older people’s needs in lower- and middle-income countries.
Further resources
- Book: A Long Journey Home: Losing and Remaking Home following Conflict and Displacement by Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia – How do experiences of internal displacement affect someone’s life course and attitude toward ageing? In his recent book, honorary research fellow Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia unearths poignant stories of ageing and home. You can also listen to our podcast on the book’s findings.
- Special issue: Ageing and Development, Progress in Development Studies edited by
Julie Vullnetari, Tanja Bastia, and Penny Vera-Sanso – A collection of articles that unsettles some of the commonplace stereotypes in development debates that portray older people as frail, vulnerable, burdensome and passive.
The aftermath of an uprising
In September 2022, the death of 22-year-old Jîna (Mahsa) Amini by Iranian authorities sparked a flurry of rage and protest in Iran and throughout the world. Known as the “Woman Life Freedom” movement, it garnered much attention in the global press and shone a light on the oppression that has shaped life in Iran for decades.
Dilek Celebi, a PhD researcher in GDI, recently put forward some thoughtful reflections on what has changed since Amini’s death in an article for the GDI blog. Celebi notes that the uprising has altered the discourse of political resistance in Iran. While the country is no stranger to intense and prolonged dissent in response to authoritarianism and economic grievances, Amini’s death placed gender at the forefront of resistance, putting feminist issues in conversation with other justice-oriented discourses.
Despite this success, Celebi also notes that the lack of structured organisation surrounding the uprising has limited its long-term effectiveness, with robust state repression draining the movement’s capacity and momentum. While repressive institutions remain intact and resistance falls out of the news, authoritarian power maintains the upper hand.
However, GDI’s Research Fellow Arash Beidollahkani and co-author Mahdiyeh Ghorashi identify potential gaps in the regime’s repressive architectures in article titled ‘Hashtagging Resistance: Media, Authority, and Women’s Subjectivity in Post-Mahsa Iran’.
Grounded in Lacanian theory, the paper examines the role of digital technologies in protest and identity formation, finding the politicised hashtags used by feminist movements as markers of symbolic rupture and subversion. Lacan posits that individuals realise their subjectivity by grappling with “master discourses” – narratives and norms that shape the dominant ideological order. In so doing, they submit to forces that may subordinate dissident desires or imperatives.
Within this context, Beidollahkani and Ghorashi argue that social media sites like X exceed their communicative function to become infrastructures of symbolic disruption:
By rejecting the imposed identity (e.g., the “modest” woman under state definitions), Iranian women are not only challenging political authority but also enacting a psycho-social transformation. The creation and repetition of hashtags represent a “signifying chain” where the subject attempts to reinscribe herself in the symbolic order on her own terms. This realignment of subjectivity through digital resistance is central to the political meaning of activism in authoritarian settings like Iran.
The authors identify a sharp increase in the frequency and symbolic weight of hijab-related hashtags following Amini’s death, catalysing unrest across Iran and marking a patent shift in many women’s understanding of their agentic capacities – a broader societal shift that mainstream news coverage struggles to capture. As the paper concludes,
Iranian women’s hashtag activism is not a fleeting trend but part of a sustained feminist movement, a movement that resists through data, symbols, images, and words, all woven into a digital fabric of defiance. In reclaiming their digital space, Iranian women are not only protesting against the hijab; they are demanding a reimagination of society itself.
As resistance struggles continue, tracking such attitudinal shifts will help us understand younger generations’ political trajectory and future.
Further resources
- Article: ‘Visual resistance, digital counterpublics, and feminist agency in Iran’s digital protests from 2018 to 2023’ by Arash Beidollahkani – What role has visual media played in feminist protest in Iran? This article argues that imagery posted to social media constitutes new feminist political imaginaries rooted in embodied defiance and digital circulation.
There’s plenty more to explore…
As you can see, GDI researchers are attending to an impressive breadth of issues shaping our volatile world. However, the research mentioned above represents just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re keen to explore further research outputs, visit the GDI website or search publications in Research Explorer. You can also keep track of the latest updates from the institute via Instagram, LinkedIn, and Bluesky. If you haven’t done so already, please sign up to our newsletter to receive monthly updates and commentary.
Top image by AbsolutVision on Unsplash