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.

At DSA2025, the following study groups are supporting panels.

Following an EDI audit of UK Development Studies HEIs (2023-2024), the DSA received a grant from the Academy of Social Sciences to address the retention and progression of academics of colour. One component of this work is research into EDI best practices across DSA member institutions.

Heads of Centres have been emailed by Madhuri Kamtam with questions to respond to on this. Please keep an eye on your inbox or email [email protected]

Reflecting after the 2024 DSA conference, DSA members Susannah Pickering-Saqqa, Emanuela Girei, Ibrahim Natil and Fiorenzo Polito discuss three clusters of critiques in relation to the risk the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism poses to scholars and practitioners in the field of development.

The Decolonising Development Directory is a DSA platform which lists scholars who take decolonised approaches to development studies. If you’d like to add your work to the directory or reach out to someone on the directory please do so. The Directory is open access and members are free to contact one another independently regarding potential collaborations.

The Department of International Development at the University of Sussex reframed its focus, using the term “critical hope” as the guiding principle for the curriculum and research, helping students to grapple with the knowledge of development’s colonial history and its embedded inequalities. This approach encourages students to explore what’s possible beyond traditional models.

DSA’s NGOs and development study group will host a webinar on Local Ownership in the Global South: NGOs’ Responses to Conflict and Militarism, which will explore concepts and practices of local ownership when civil society organisations engage with their local target groups, policy makers and international partners. Scheduled to take place 29 May, watch in the newsletter for how to register.

The group are also planning a meeting for young PhD students in the field of international development at the University of East London.

As part of EADI’s 50th anniversary celebration, EADI has been critically assessing and reflect on development and development studies. DSA members have been collaborating with EADI (including participation in a pre-conference workshop at DSA2024), and have authored articles in a forthcoming special issue of the European Journal of Development Research, EADI’s journal. An EADI roundtable at DSA2025 will build on this work.

Pritish Behuria’s (GDI) open access paper Is the Study of Development Humiliating or Emancipatory? The Case Against Universalising ‘Development’ is part of this forthcoming special issue.

In response to restricted funding, humanitarian actors are having to prioritise where to deploy their resources. Charlotte Brown and Costanza Torre delve into the policy.

GDI’s Richard Heeks and colleagues have published a new paper on pragmatist-critical realism as a development studies research paradigm and explores what it would mean not to fully integrate the two but to bring together complementary aspects as a new research paradigm: ‘pragmatist-critical realism’.

Poverty is something we all want to see less of. So why does it prove so difficult to tackle? Can empathy help fix it? These are the questions at the core of CSGD co-deputy director Keetie Roelen in her new book, The Empathy Fix.

Calling gender equality experts. Would you like to produce a gender analysis of the arts & culture sectors in nine countries? This will build knowledge of participation & agency, barriers across art forms, and leadership pipelines.

The British Council have a research opportunity, and applications close 27 January 2025.

Professor Peter Taylor has been appointed Director of the Institute of Development Studies. Peter has close to 40 years of experience in international development, most recently as Acting Director for IDS since April 2024 and Director of Research at IDS. He is currently a member of the DSA Council. We wish him well in his new role.

What has a feminist perspective brought to the pursuit of Environmental Justice as a critical enquiry, as a collective struggle and as a means to decolonise research and planning practice and theory?

Watch DPU’s event with Caren Levy, Adriana Allen, Bruna Ferreira Montuori and Jordana Ramalho.

In 2024 we witnessed the rise of a multipolar world, encouraging a more balanced power structure and diverse perspectives, but also deepening fragmentation, instability and economic inequality.

Listen to the latest Think Change podcast where Sara Pantuliano, Jeremy Bowen, Bright Simons and Linda Yueh reflect on 2024’s defining moments and look ahead to the key trends likely to shape 2025.

Diana Mitlin reflects on what working on the African Cities Research Consortium has brought to her work at the University of Manchester, and how that can improve development in Manchester and the role the University plays in this.

Amir Lebdioui opened the UN Financing for Development Dialogues, which aim to engage academia in the preparations for the 4th Conference on Financing for Development and inform Member States in their efforts to achieve the SDGs.

By bringing academia into the policy discussion, UNDESA is insuring a more inclusive but also evidence-based dialogue into the Financing for Development negotiations.

* Launch of ‘Public Library UK Vol 1, After Kenneth Little’ by Richard Hylton, SOAS. 16 Jan
* Whiteness in the Caribbean: Histories, Cultures, Politics, Warwick, 21 Jan
* Economic development of the Global South in the age of geopolitical upheaval, SOAS, 22 Jan
* Chinese Investment Boom in Hungary, Open University, 23 Jan
* Economic development in the 21st Century: debate. LSE, 23 Jan
* Learning Teams to Support Children’s Learning and Wellbeing, CSGD at OU, 29 Jan
* The Empathy Fix book launch, London, 30 Jan; 11 Feb IDS