Thanks to the support of journal sponsors, we are pleased to announce this year’s plenary sessions which bring together world-renowned scholars to interrogate the intersecting crises of global fragmentation, structural gender inequalities, and the power asymmetries embedded within digital transformations.

The conference opens on Wednesday with a keynote address by Professor Kaushik Basu, exploring the structural challenges facing global development in an increasingly fractured geopolitical and economic landscape.

Professor Kaushik Basu is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and has previously served as the Chief Economist of the World Bank (2012–2016) and Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian Government (2009–2012). He holds a PhD and an M.Sc (Econ) from the London School of Economics, and a BA (Hons) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

A recipient of the Humboldt Research Award (2021) and the Padma Bhushan (2008) awarded by the President of India, Professor Basu has held visiting academic appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), Harvard University, Princeton University, and M.I.T. His extensive publications span development economics, industrial organization, and game theory, including his landmark monograph, The Republic of Beliefs: A New Approach to Law and Economics (Princeton University Press, 2018).

From Growth to Wellbeing: Re-Imagining the Economy from a Feminist Perspective

Life for human beings has always been characterised by risk and uncertainty, but societies have generally been able to provide sufficient protection to their members to allow them to meet the needs of today and to plan for tomorrow – although most societies have done so more successfully for some of their members than for others.

But we have now moved into an era of market-driven growth that is characterised by steadily rising inequality, accelerating climate change and intensified gender injustice. These are not new phenomena – what is new is the pace and intensity of the changes involved, the global nature of their repercussions and the pervasive nature of the uncertainty they introduce about what tomorrow might bring. Indeed, climate change has raised questions over whether there will indeed be a tomorrow, not just for those who are most disadvantaged today but for humanity as a whole and for the planet it occupies.

While there has been a great deal of critical analysis of this era of uncertainty from a range of different perspectives, they converge in their conclusion that its roots lie in the unregulated markets that dominate the world economy today and that subordinate all aspects of human and non-human life to the profit-driven values of the marketplace.

Prof Kabeer will argue is that these critiques provide us with the resources to re-imagine the economy from one that prioritizes growth to one that centres wellbeing; and that they point to the importance of feminist values and priorities in helping us navigate the transition to this reimagined future.

Professor Naila Kabeer is a Faculty Member of the International Inequalities Institute and serves on the governing board of the Atlantic Fellowship for Social and Economic Equity at the LSE. Her research, teaching, and advisory expertise focuses on gender, poverty, livelihoods, social protection, and inclusive citizenship, with a particular geographic emphasis on South Asia.

Her foundational text, Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought, was published in 1994, and her most recent volume, Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox, was published open-access by LSE Press in 2024. Professor Kabeer has advised numerous multilateral and non-governmental institutions, including the World Bank, UNDP, UN Women, the Asian Development Bank, Oxfam, ActionAid, BRAC, and PRADAN. She is an editorial board member for Feminist Economics and Gender and Development, and serves in an advisory capacity for Development and Change, Bangladesh Development Studies, and the European Journal of Development Research. She currently serves on the advisory boards of UNRISD and the UNU International Institute for Global Health, and is a member of both the UN Women Leaders’ Network and the UN High Level Expert Group on “Beyond Growth.”

Who Gets Seen, Who Gets Used: Synthetic Geographies and the Political Economy of Generative AI

Generative AI is increasingly shaping how places are known, valued and governed. This talk argues that AI is best understood not as a neutral tool for information, nor as a proxy for human cognition, but as an infrastructure of uneven development. It concentrates the power to represent the world while dispersing the work and risks of building that representation. Large language models produce synthetic geographies: digitally mediated accounts of place that can flatten, rank and overwrite local knowledge. At the same time, these systems depend on extractive labour and supply chains that stretch across uneven global economies.

This talk will draw on an audit of 20 million ChatGPT queries to show how large language models reproduce and amplify long-standing spatial inequalities and through the lens of the silicon gaze, will map systematic distortions in representations of countries, regions, cities and neighbourhoods. A five-part typology of place-based bias: availability, pattern, averaging, trope, and proxy will explain how some places are rendered hyper-visible while others become invisible or stereotyped.

This talk will argue that generative AI is an extraction machine dependent on sustained control over capital, infrastructure, data and, critically, human labour. Drawing on the Fairwork project’s action research initiative, will show benchmarking can make hidden workforces and power asymmetries visible and contestable, and how similar tools might be adapted to govern fairness across AI production networks.

If generative AI is reshaping how the world is seen, then a central question for development studies is who controls the means of representation and who bears the costs of producing it.

Professor Mark Graham explores how digital technologies intersect with geographic contexts, transforming labor, value chains, and spatial inequalities on a global scale. His research focuses specifically on data workers at the economic periphery and the extractive working conditions they navigate. He leads the Fairwork action research initiative, which evaluates corporate digital platforms to encourage adherence to fair labor standards.

Professor Graham holds a Senior Research Fellowship at Green Templeton College, is a Research Affiliate in the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, a Research Associate at the Centre for Information Technology and National Development in Africa at the University of Cape Town, a Visiting Researcher at the Berlin Social Science Centre, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE) at The New School.

Global asymmetrical relations of power in representation and production date back to colonialism, becoming institutionalised through the ‘great divergence’ and the industrial revolution. The discourse of ‘development’ emerged as a new programme in North-South relations in the first half of the 20th century as a successor discourse to colonialism. While maintaining the colonial elements of Eurocentrism and trusteeship, the new discourse denounced the ‘old imperialism’ and introduced ideas of a North-South partnership beneficial to both sides.

In the 21st century, the colonial elements of the discourse have increasingly been criticized, leading to the new catchword of ‘decolonising development’. Is it possible to discard the colonial elements of development cooperation? Can the asymmetrical relations of power in representation and production be overcome? The case of the German Ministry for Development Cooperation BMZ’s new strategy of a feminist, postcolonial and anti-racist development policy provides some insights.

Professor Aram Ziai will serve as the designated discussant, contextualizing the political economy of digital transformation within historical and postcolonial lineages of knowledge control. Professor Ziai holds the Chair of Development and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel and serves as the Director of the Global Partnership Network, one of the Centers of Excellence for Exchange and Development funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). He has previously held academic positions at the universities of Hamburg, Amsterdam (UvA), Vienna (IE), Bonn (ZEF), Accra (UG), and Tehran (UT). His research specialized areas include Post-Development approaches, the operations of the World Bank Inspection Panel, and structural neocolonialism within the global economy.

The DSA thanks all our sponsors for their support for the keynote talks.