DSA supports a number of study groups where researchers, teachers, students and people working in development come together from across disciplines to work on specific themes and questions relevant to development studies.

The DSA2026 conference will take place as a hybrid conference and will be organised and hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Development, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin. At DSA2026, the study groups below are convening panels. Find out more about the conference and submit a panel before 30 December 2025.

This panel explores how informality can constrain and/or allow for forms of grassroots agency that contribute to inclusive urban futures. Informality is a defining feature of urban life across the Global South. Given its central role in housing, employment, and service provision, informality may substantially shape equitable urban development pathways. But this potential often depends on whether and how grassroots agency can support alternative visions and foster economic, social, and political progress in cities.. The panel welcome papers exploring urban informality, grassroots agency and inclusive futures in the Global South. Read more.

This panel explores how AI reshapes development through power, inequality and digital dependency. It highlights Big Tech’s role in recasting AI as a critical tool to address sustainability challenges, glossing over data colonialism, surveillance, and the environmental impact of data infrastructures. The panel invites contributions that critically explore how AI is governed, resisted or repurposed in development contexts- particularly in postcolonial settings. Topics include, but are not limited to: AI geopolitics; role of Big Tech firms in shaping AI development trajectories and AI infrastructure in South-South or South-North partnerships/competition; national AI strategies; algorithmic injustice; agency shifts in power; surveillance; data colonialism; and bottom-up resistance. Read more.

Papers for this panel will reflect the fact that the directly political element of colonialism has been superseded by ‘independence’ but that ‘neocolonialism’ persists. It is expected that papers will examine this persistence and analyse the means of achieving greater degrees of decolonisation. The panel will aim to deepen understanding of the persistence of neocolonial structures while also highlighting pathways toward meaningful decolonisation. The expectation is that it will emphasise the voices and experiences of those working to achieve autonomy, to assert local knowledge systems, and to build futures that reflect local priorities and values. Read more.

Amid growing global uncertainty, development actors face persistent and shifting forms of poverty linked to gender inequality and environmental fragility. This panel examines lessons from two decades of anti-poverty work to guide the next generation of inclusive and sustainable development. The session aims to bridge conceptual debates and empirical insight with practical experience. Ultimately, the panel seeks to re-examine how anti-poverty interventions can more effectively foster agency, resilience, and empowerment, and what this means for reimagining development futures in an uncertain world. Read more.

In this workshop, we will reflect on moments in the last 25+ years that can be classified as critical junctures, or key turning points leading to significant change, in the field of religions and development., with a focus on critical junctures that have shaped the discipline and field of policy/practice. What moments in the last 25+ years can be classified as critical junctures, or key turning points leading to significant change, in the field? We are interested in contributions reflecting on the role that key events have had on the discipline. Read more.

This interdisciplinary panel series brings feminist and decolonial perspectives together to challenge dominant development paradigms, centring epistemic justice, feminist solidarities, and alternative knowledge systems to rethink power, agency, and transformative practice. The group will host a series of three interlinked and interdisciplinary panels that bring together feminist and decolonial perspectives to interrogate and reimagine the concept and practice of development. Rather than accepting development as a universal, technocratic, or apolitical project, the panels foreground epistemic justice, feminist solidarities, and alternative knowledge systems as starting points for rethinking power, agency, and collaboration in uncertain times. Read more.

This panel explores how Indigenous climate justice imaginaries challenges the global climate regime, underscoring the ethical and political importance of Indigenous action and resistance in advancing planetary sustainability. It seeks to interrogate the tensions between indigenous climate justice imaginaries and the global climate change regime, foregrounding the ethical and political significance of indigenous climate actions and resistance for planetary sustainability. We invite comparative perspectives on the ways in which indigenous groups mobilize themselves, local governance, customary law, and spiritual practices as tools of resistance and renewal. Read more.

For decades, dependency scholarship has been considered to be opposed to developmental state scholarship, resulting in the two schools often being caricatured by one another. This panel invites papers to examine whether development may still be possible under contemporary globalisation. Ideally, papers would bridge or revisit these traditions, draw on cases from the Global South, or advance theoretical innovations that reimagine dependency and developmentalism. By reopening dialogue between these two traditions, the panel seeks to reassess the prospects for structural transformation in a world economy where global interdependence and structural asymmetries persist. Read more.

This panel aims to provide a platform for critical discussion on civil society’s responses to the resurgence of authoritarianism, white supremacy, and the deepening crisis of multilateralism, focusing on grassroots and collective public actions in this unprecedented political moment. This panel explores the notion of ‘grassroots agency’ to foster reflections and dialogues on the practices and possibilities of advancing solidarity, anti-racism, and decolonisation. Read more.