19th Development Dialogue - Reckoning with the past and imagining the futures of development

Keynote speaker

The keynote lecture will be given by Professor Uma Kothari, professor of Migration and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Manchester.

She will give a lecture entitled 'Towards decoloniality, solidarity and justice: Addressing the past for a more hopeful future'.

Find out more about the DD conference

Background

The field of development studies is not estranged from critiques of extractive and hegemonizing policies and practices – the power relations that reproduce structural inequalities around the world.

In the age of environmental crises, unprecedented migration and displacement, and questions around justice and equity, we believe that development research and praxis are undergoing a moment of reckoning as scholars and practitioners grapple with the limitations and shortcomings of dominant approaches to development.

The theme of DD19 speaks to the ongoing pertinent issues of the regime we currently live in, where ‘development’ is impacted by past mistakes as well as impacts contemporary attempts for justice.

Climate change, war, human rights violations, unequal resource distribution, and discrimination based on gender, sexuality, caste, class, race, nationality, religion, and numerous other dimensions that characterize our identities - who we are - are all part of the discussion.

People are negatively and unevenly affected by these dimensions in each periphery of the world, with the most marginalized groups suffering the most. These inequalities have only been accentuated and made worse by the COVID-19 outbreak, which demonstrated the reflexive way specific discourses continue to dominate and define contemporary approaches to research and praxis.