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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40 years of gender in the DPU

Mobilising Learning for Change: 40 Years of Gender in the DPU – Caren Levy reflects.

In its 70th anniversary year, the DPU is not only celebrating seven decades of higher education in international development policy and planning, They are also recognising 40 years of working actively in the DPU with gender justice in teaching, research, capacity building and practice-based work, and public engagement.

The DPU’s decentred learning approach in the context of international policy and planning, identifies five principles of a “pedagogical approach, which has at its core a commitment towards knowledge co-production. These five principles are that learning is relational, reflexive, embedded, active and collective.

“Practicing learning that embraces these five principles demands intellectual vigilance and openness.” writes Caren Levy, Professor of Transformative Urban Planning at DPU. “It is an engagement with a transdisciplinary practice that seeks to hold multiple knowledges across disciplines in simultaneous view. Embedded in this is the grounded reality of diverse gendered lives and expressions, often painful in their inequalities and absence of respect for human rights, are collective endeavours reflecting the power and inspiration of doing things differently and together.”