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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Decolonising Development

The initiatives we are undertaking that work towards decolonising development studies

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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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IDD, University of Birmingham: March news

New Publications

Blogs and other project news

  • Nic Cheeseman (with Marie Eve-Desrosiers) launched a new report, How (not) to engage with authoritarian states), which outlines six pitfalls with the way that democratic donors engage with authoritarian counterparts, and sets out a new vision for how they can “do no harm” in the future. 
  • Nic Cheeseman has started to write as an occasional essayist for the Wall St Journal, opening his account with this analysis of the Nigerian general elections
  • Nic’s analysis on Nigeria also appeared in the Guardian and on France 24, while his column for the Africa Report addressed the alarming increase in people reporting that the feel unsafe across the continent. 
  • Bizuneh Yimenu was interviewed by Klassekampen, a Norwegian media outlet, about the conflict in Ethiopia.

DLP news

The Developmental Leadership Program (DLP) has released four new research brief-style publications, the result of three years of DLP Phase III research: 

  • In Legislative leadership on environmental issues (with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy), Petra Alderman looks at single-use plastic bans in 32 countries, with a focus on Barbados, Kenya and Thailand. The report argues legislatures can play an important role in environmental policymaking, but face several barriers to which it recommends approaches to dismantling.

The Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice (TWP CoP) news

Serious Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme (SOC ACE) news

  • The Future of Illicit Economies in Afghanistan, a side eventin collaboration with the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE),will be held during the 2023 Commission of Narcotic Drugs (CND), Vienna, 13-17 March 2023. This event will present cutting edge policy and academic analysis of illicit economies in Afghanistan, past, present and future. 
  • Russian Illicit Finance and the War in Ukraine, Monday 20 March. This event will showcase research from four projects run under SOC ACE looking at illicit financial flows from different perspectives. Focusing on Russian illicit finance and on the new dynamics that Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has entailed in this sphere, this invitation-only workshop will consider the available evidence and the policy mechanisms that have been implemented. 
  • Professor Heather Marquette attended the first meeting of the RUSI State Threat Task Force, which aims to support the UK and its partners in detecting, understanding, attributing and responding to the spectrum of complex state threats currently facing democracies.
  • There have also been a series of SOC ACE briefings for the Ministry of Defence/Defence Intelligence/Joint Narcotics Analysis Centre and FCDO/Illicit Finance & Anti-Corruption Department.
  • A new SOC ACE website is currently being designed, and is due to launch at the beginning of April!
  • 12 new projects have been approved for the next round of funding, and 4 pilot phase projects have also been extended.