Developement Research Conference 2018

The Conference Committee would like to thank all participants, presenters, panelists, chairs, and the keynote speakers for making the conference a great event! If you are looking for presented papers please contact the authors or chairs directly. 

About the conference

What kind of ‘development’ is wanted for today’s world? The idea, study, and policy field of ‘development’ emerged in the 1940s, in a time of decolonization, the Cold War, and Euro-centric high modernism. Seventy years later the scene is one of new emerging economies, migration crises, multiculturalism, climate change, and new patterns of infectious and chronic diseases. Given such profound transformations, do we need, again, to rethink ‘development’?

Development can be rethought in terms of concepts, issues, methods and policies. For example, does it still make sense to speak of a ‘North’ and a ‘South’? Do the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) go far enough in redefining the research and policy agenda? Do we need to redirect research attention to new and re-emerging issues such as diasporas, digitization, food security, religion, intellectual property, and health surveillance; or is an older agenda of trade, democracy and conflict resolution as vital as ever? Do we need to ‘rethink’ the migration-development nexus in global development research and policymaking? What place, if any, remains for ‘aid’ in today’s altered development landscape? What new relationships can be forged between developing country scientists and international research partners when setting local research priorities and government policies? Has the moment arrived to construct a truly transdisciplinary development studies – and what does such a methodology entail more precisely? How does development research handle the question of scale in the face of trends towards localization, regionalization and globalization, along with resurgent nationalism? Do we need a renewed debate on ethics and positionality in global development research and practice? Indeed, are ecological and other critics right to question the very notion of ‘development’ – and, if so, what takes its place?

To engage these and other debates at the forefront of development studies, the School of Global Studies and the Centre on Global Migration at the University of Gothenburg invites your participation in the next biennial Development Research Conference, sponsored by the Swedish Research Council and Sida, on 22-23 August 2018. 

Panels at the conference

• (Un)sustainable migration regimes: experiences from the Global South
• Air pollution in developing regions; climate and health
• Animal health in development
• Big push and great letdown: on the ambivalence of development zones and corridors
• Bridging the political/civil divide: civil society rights mobilization and political change
• Colonial legacies, postcolonial ‘selfhood’ and (un)doing development in the Global South
• Critical approaches to compact cities and informal settlements in an urban world
• Development and gender: present perspectives and new frontiers
• Development and religion: what are the links? Why should we care?
• Development in a hostile climate: exploring the adaptation-development nexus
• Development, right wing populism and state violence
• Development: inclusive or exclusive for people on the margins
• Digitization and development
• Disaggregated analyses of aid effectiveness
• Electoral integrity in a variety of regimes
• Exporting Nordic goodness: critical perspectives on the humanitarian superpowers
• External influence over regional organizations and regionalism
• Feminist foreign policy and feminist aid: rethinking gender and development?
• Good governance and public goods: the challenges of efficient service delivery in the developing world
• Integrated approaches to SDG implementation - what does it really mean?
• New frontiers in land and resource tenure research
• Ownership in a changing world of development cooperation
• Peace education and quality education
• Peacebuilding amidst violence
• Power, resistance and social change
• Privatization and marketization of development aid
• Reconfiguring power: investors, ruling elites and local populations
• Reflecting on the role of local context and collaboration in transdisciplinary development research
• Researching LGBTQ rights in restrictive contexts: theories, methods, ethics
• Researching the local: from context to knowledge
• Resistance between contention and counter-hegemony: towards an understanding of social development as enacting alternatives
• Restore more - it’s all about multifunctional landscapes
• Rethinking development and land in the context of the Paris Agreement on climate change
• Rethinking development research: objects and subjects in development studies
• Rethinking water and sanitation services - can we balance immediate and future needs?
• The Global South as laboratory? the politics of experimentation and intervention in contemporary global development
• The legitimacy of governing development
• The opportunities and challenges for aquaculture to act as catalyst for blue growth and food security
• The opportunities and challenges in urban and peri-urban agriculture and the role for science-based policies and practice
• The politics of the Sustainable Development Goals
• Towards an understanding of how result measurements and management hinder
• Urban violence: causes, consequences and characteristics
• Water management for food production in an era of changing development agendas