Our Aims and Objectives

We are the UK association for all those who research, study and teach global development issues

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What is Development Studies

What is development studies and decolonising development.

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Our Members

We have around 1,000 members, made up of individuals and around 40 institutions

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Governance

Find out about our constitution, how we are run and meet our Council

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People

Meet our Council members and other staff who support the running of DSA

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About

The DSA Conference is an annual event which brings together the development studies community

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DSA2024

Our conference this year is themed "Social justice and development in a polarising world"

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Past Conferences

Find out about our previous conferences

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Study Groups

Our Study Groups offer a chance to connect with others who share your areas of interest

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Students and ECRs

Students and early career researchers are an important part of our community

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Publications

Our book series with OUP and our relationship with other publishers

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North-South Research

A series of workshops exploring North-South interdisciplinary research with key messages and reports

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Membership Directory

Find out who our members are, where they are based and the issues they work on

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Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh November News

Publications

Falisse, J-.B. and Leszczynska, N. (2021) Do anti-corruption sensitisation messages improve public service delivery? A lab-in-the-field experiment in Burundi. Journal of Development Studies

Falisse, J.-B. and Nkengurutse, H. (2021) Citizens committees and local elites: elite capture, captured elites, and absent elites in health facility committees. European Journal of Development Research

Macdonald, R. and Molony, T. 2021. ‘Holding Elections during Future Pandemics and Other Emergencies: Evidence-Based Recommendations’, African Elections during the COVID-19 Pandemic project briefing paper, with Westminster Foundation for Democracy

Mnwana, S., & Bowman, A. (2021). Land, conflict and radical distributive claims in South Africa’s rural mining frontier. The Extractive Industries and Society, 100972.

Mucherera, B., Spiegel, S., (2021) “Forced displacement: critical lessons in the protracted aftermath of a flood disaster.” GeoJournal 1-21. 

The Edinburgh Catalyst Fellowship programme

After delays caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic, six workshops sponsored by CAS under the Catalyst Fellowship initiative were finally able to go ahead. Workshops were held in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Mali, with more than 200 scholars based at Universities in Africa able to attend. Thematic workshops addressed diverse issues ranging from artisanal mining in Mali, decolonisation of legal education in Kenya, decolonisation of the human sciences in Nigeria, micropolitics of conflict in West Africa and public health in Ghana.

As part of the Catalyst Fellowship, CAS, in collaboration with the Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana, organised a two-day Early Career Workshop for advanced PhD students, post-docs and academic staff over the summer. Under the theme, “Facilitating Relationships and Capacity Building Among Early Career Academics in the Humanities” workshop participants from West Africa were involved in information sessions on opportunities for research collaborations, funding for Africa-based research, and critical tools for effective teaching and academic leadership. Participants also submitted article-length manuscripts on different topics in African Studies and received critical feedback from senior peers during the workshop.  Mr Peter Gymaponsah Bembir was awarded the as the ‘Most Engaging Participant’ and Ms Gertrude Sarah Aidoo, received the award for the ‘Overall Best Paper’ for the workshop.

For further information on all the Catalyst Fellowship initiatives and the brilliant work being done by our Catalyst Fellows, please go to https://catalystfellowships.wordpress.com/

Other News
  • CAS PhD student Antonia Juelich has been awarded an International Security Program Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. The Fellowship will be held at the International Security Program (ISP) at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.
  • CAS PhD student Ismaël Maazaz, has been awarded the Saltire early career fellowship by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Starting in January 2022, the fellowship includes a 9-month posting at the research unit “Environment, City, Society” of the University of Lyon (France)
  • CAS is proud to support the Africa in Motion Film Festival. The Africa in Motion 2021 film festival presents a selection of the best cinema from Africa and the Black diaspora, sharing with audiences a wide array of films that uniquely represent the continent – an enticing variety of languages, genres and filmmaking styles. The 16th Africa in Motion Film Festival will be held online from 15th – 31st October 2021.
  • CAS affiliate and HCA staff, Dr Emily Brownell, was shortlisted for the Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize from the African Studies Association with her book ‘Gone to Ground: A History of Environment and Infrastructure in Dar-es-Salaam’.
  • A blog post by CAS Research Fellow Robert MacDonald on role of election observers/monitors in recent election in Zambia is an output from the ESRC-funded ‘Local Perceptions and Media Representations of Election Observation in Africa’ project
  • A blog post by Robert Macdonald and Thomas Molony for Westminster Foundation for Democracy focused on holding elections during future pandemics and other emergencies. This was an output of ‘African Elections during the COVID-19 Pandemic’, a collaborative project between researchers from the University of Edinburgh, the Open University of Tanzania, the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development and the Harvard Humanitarian Initative (working with the NGO Echelle).