While numerous publications have examined the challenges faced by Western academics conducting research in repressive or illiberal countries, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding the unique obstacles encountered by native academics also doing research in these countries. Although native researchers experience many of the challenges highlighted in existing research, such as surveillance, personal safety concerns, data security issues and ethical dilemmas involving vulnerable populations, they also face distinct additional risks and obstacles that have been consistently overlooked in the existing literature. This presentation aims to bridge this gap by presenting narratives from 18 scholars who conducted fieldwork in their native non-democratic or illiberal countries. These scholars encountered challenges directly related to their native status, including governmental pressure on their friends and family, legal threats from local authorities, limited consular assistance for dual nationals, the influence of personal characteristics on social interactions, and exploitation by Western colleagues. The presentation not only addresses this critical gap in the literature but also provides practical guidance for academics planning to conduct fieldwork in their native non-democratic states.

My research explores skilled performance and experimentation as a networked practice. In the context of sustainable livelihoods and local resource management, I examine the skilled and task-based performance of professionals involved in participatory interventions, and how this reinforces shared visions and objectives around of social inclusion, empowerment, or sustainability. As a case study, I focus on ‘Participatory Rangeland Management’ (PRM) in Kenya, designed as a multi-stakeholder process of strengthening local institutional capacity, in order to support sustainable management of dryland resources between pastoral communities. My fieldwork explores networks that assemble and perform PRM as a 'participatory innovation'. This is a multi-sited ethnography, drawing on approaches of ‘institutional ethnography’ and ‘ethnography of expertise’. This presentation will focus on methodology, experiences from the field, barriers that (in particular) graduate students face when investigating sites of power, and responsible strategies for building rapport, establishing legitimacy, and gaining access to the withdrawn life of practice.

This article documents the experiences and journeys of three women graduate students in international development in the context of the Canadian neoliberal university. Our research describes how our individual journeys led us to form a feminist collaborative space that grew from an individualistic approach to the graduate experience to a collaborative, feminist, sisterhood environment built on mutual support, compassion, intellectual debate and growth. Drawing on an a collaborative autoethnographical methodological approach, we map our professional and personal journeys and journey together and argue that our feminist collaborative space became a space of resistance in a highly competitive, individualistic environment within the neoliberal university. We describe how other graduate students can learn from our experience as they struggle through the normalized lonely journey of graduate studies.

Reflecting on fieldwork on women's activism in Bangladesh, this paper draws on Aziz Choudry’s (2010; 2015; 2024) writings on knowledge production, research and activism, alongside Dorothy Smith’s (1974; 1987; 1990) and George W. Smith's (1990) work on institutional ethnography and political activist ethnography, respectively, to examine how positioning activists as creative subjects – and indeed, agents of change – reverses the dichotomy in academic research between activists who create change and the scholars who theorize it. I argue that to effectively orient research toward struggles for social change, the methodology adopted by researchers must itself must be capable of generating concepts from 'active subjects' (cf. Freire, 1970; Bannerji, 1995) whose creative contributions to theory are little recognized. Honing in on this interplay between activist research and social action helps to clarify the purpose - and ultimately, the utility - of the research aimed at social transformation itself.

The study of Latin America as a site of mineral and fossil fuel resource extraction and the impact this has on socio-economic transformations in the region is by no means new. However, mounting global pressures to decarbonize energy systems and related geopolitical tensions to secure critical natural resources have placed a new emphasis on Latin America. The region is looked to for supplying raw materials essential for green technologies, and thereby as a pivotal player in globalized sustainability efforts. As many states seek to leverage this context and their resource wealth, new tensions and openings can be expected to form that reveal important power dynamics. This panel seeks to revisit familiar extractivist states in Latin America, though in the context of these changing dynamics. With global powers seeking strategic relationships with extractive states and multinational firms to secure consistent and reliable upstream sources of energy resources, there are both opportunities and challenges for states in Latin America to leverage their endowments. In this process, a number of subnational conflicts arise between communities and the interests of transnational actors that are often supported by rent seeking states. In other cases, states are re-asserting their sovereign right to restrict foreign access to the subsoil and restructuring their governance of natural resource sectors in an effort to shift uneven patterns of exchange.

This panel applies critical perspectives to ask: What new strategies of natural resource governance have emerged from the recent push for clean energy minerals? What are the rifts created at the subnational level, and how do they mirror or diverge from earlier social-environmental tensions? The panel brings together studies from multiple scales (global, national, local) to discuss findings related to a range of opportunities and challenges facing extractivist development under the global demands for commodities to power the clean energy transition.

With the internationalization of education and mass immigration, classroom participation and speech, a colonial-Western educational phenomenon and necessity (Murray, 2018; Dénommé-Welch and Rowsell, 2017), has gained greater currency. However, the understandings afforded by scholars examining cultures of learning (Jin & Cortazzi, 2017) have allowed ‘silence’ not to be perceived from a deficit lens. Yet, to ‘fit’ into the Western notion of a good learner, silence in the classroom is viewed as less preferable than verbal participation.

Research and analysis done by scholars like Schultz (2009) and Zembylas & Michaelides (2004) acknowledge the value of silence in education and bring forward the need to consider silence as a form of embodied participation. Using a decolonial/more-than-human affective lens (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Zembylas, 2016), we argue that not only do we need to legitimize (non) oral, embodied participation in Western classrooms but also decentre the colonial-Western notion of speech as the privileged form of participation by bringing silence back from the periphery: rethinking talk and silence not as a dichotomy but as an entanglement and making silent participation visible through “respectful listening and reflective witnessing” (Barkaskas & Gladwin, 2021).

Accordingly, as we rethink participation and engagement through a more inclusive lens, it’s essential to broaden how these are evaluated in educational settings. By considering learners' deeply personal and intrinsic engagement experiences; including silence as a form of participation, we aim to showcase a more expansive approach to evaluation. In our presentation, we will share a rubric designed for graduate programs that fosters classroom socialization for professionals such as educators, counsellors, and social workers. While rooted in this context, we hope the rubric can be adapted to other educational settings and provide valuable insights for educators across diverse contexts.

Over the years, there have been significant processes developed and literature written on project management processes, on the successes and failures in project management, and on the implications of project management on accountability and transparency. These contributions have overwhelmingly originated from or are based on Western knowledge, cultures, and understandings. The field of project management in the ‘development’ sector has also experienced increasing pressure to professionalize. The calls to establish codified standards for this domain result from concerns regarding the inconsistent use of proper project management techniques and the lack of oversight in this regard. These coveted techniques are often informed by lessons learned from project management in the private sector and in the field of international ‘development’, and by theories of management that originate from the experiences of the Western world.

While these changes are undertaken in hopes of opening the space further for non-Western-based voices and of enhancing the integration of non-Western actors into project management processes, they do not necessarily contribute to the reassessment of the epistemology that underlays project management, the philosophy of project management, and the way ‘problems’ are understood. As such, this push to professionalize and advance the field conflicts with the arguments and the resulting initiatives to decolonize the ‘development’ sector and the practice of project management in this field. It also complicates the work that several donors and international actors are undertaking as they grapple with how and whether to decolonize their aid.

Using an innovative approach of integrating Critical Management Theory (CMT) with decolonial theories and methods, this research presents an innovative initial way forward that contributes to the reimagination of project management as a discipline in the field of ‘development’. It also provides viable recommendations that can be used by professionals and researchers for decolonizing project management in the present.

This paper critically examines the intersection of international development and cultural representation through the lens of the Canadian aporetic condition—a framework highlighting the contradictions and tensions in Canada’s colonial legacy, multicultural aspirations, and global development strategies. Using case studies from the National Film Board of Canada (NFBC), including Biidaaban: First Light and Bear 71, this analysis explores how storytelling and artistic initiatives provide alternative frameworks for understanding development challenges, specifically those tied to decolonization, environmental justice, and Indigenous sovereignty.

The paper positions Canada’s aporetic condition as a microcosm of global development challenges, reflecting broader struggles with historical injustice, power asymmetries, and environmental exploitation. It interrogates how art and cultural media can serve as tools for reimagining development beyond traditional economic and governance models, proposing instead a decolonized paradigm rooted in pluriversality and relational ethics.

This research identifies pathways for reframing togetherness, advancing solidarity, and generating sustainable, equitable futures. This work aligns with the CASID 2025 theme by proposing actionable solutions that honour diverse ways of knowing.

This paper examines our experiences (international students) in British Columbia, Canada, highlighting our unique challenges and the potential of creative engagement tools to foster inclusion. Specifically, the study investigates how Theatre of the Oppressed was utilized as a platform for critical dialogue, community building, and advocacy among international students at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV). Key findings illuminate the multifaceted challenges we face, including cultural and weather shock, lack of comprehensive pre-arrival campus orientation, immigration policy instability with a focus on international students working hours and their immigration procedures, rising tuition fees, insufficient support at the campus, and social isolation. Through discussions facilitated via Theatre of the Oppressed, we articulated a preference for informal, inclusive settings that reduce the rigidity of traditional engagement methods. Many shared poignant accounts of economic precarity, including families making significant sacrifices to support their education abroad.

The Theatre of the Oppressed enabled participants to explore our experiences through images and improvisation, identifying key themes such as financial strain, academic pressures, and the need for culturally responsive campus initiatives.

Recommendations include creating culturally led programs, establishing safe, informal spaces for international students to share their concerns, and prioritizing accessible institutional support structures. This approach not only centers international student voices but also proposes actionable solutions for fostering equity and inclusion. A mixed-methods research approach, in collaboration with international students, is crucial for shifting prevailing paradigms and critically examining the narrative that international students are primarily recruited to Canada to alleviate their financial challenges. Overall, this paper offers insights into reframing togetherness by challenging knowledge hierarchies and advancing practical strategies to bridge global inequities in higher education.

International development scholarships for higher education, funded by donor countries such as the United States, Japan, and China as part of their educational foreign assistance initiatives, aim to enhance human capital in developing countries and foster social change. Scholarship recipients from the Global South are expected to apply the knowledge and skills acquired overseas to drive positive transformations in their home countries. However, the conceptualization and experiences of "contributing to the development of their home country" vary significantly among recipients, shaped by the unique sociopolitical and economic contexts of their home countries. Additionally, donor countries design these scholarships to align with their own strategic objectives, which may influence the outcomes.

This research addresses critical gaps in understanding these dynamics and is guided by the following research question: How do scholarship returnees and scholarship funders conceptualize "contributing to the development of their home country"? The study investigates the interplay between the perspectives of returnees and the objectives of donor countries, using Vietnam as a case study to contextualize the findings.

Critical discourse analysis will be conducted on data collected through semi-structured interviews with 40 scholarship returnees and an examination of 30 policy documents and reports from donor countries. The analysis aims to uncover how these conceptualizations are shaped, identify discrepancies between returnee experiences and donor objectives, and provide recommendations for policymakers to enhance the effectiveness of international development scholarships.

In Canada, the experiences of international students have recent widespread public attention, with elected officials, political pundits, social movement advocates, members of the public and international students themselves involved in discussions regarding international students’ “belonging” in the country. Specifically, the discourse surrounding international students’ presence in the country revolve around whether international students are causing housing shortages and contributing to rising housing unaffordability.

In response, while progressive, left, movements, including labour, migrants’ justice, and human rights groups, have mobilized to fight against far right and xenophobic discourses in digital and in public spaces, these movements are divided in terms of tactics, strategies, and normative ideologies. At issue for these progressive movements is the extent to which their movements can and should support international students, given the realities of a polycrisis that can overwhelm their organizational capacities. Even movements that see international students’ issues as tied to larger questions of global economic inequality and migrant justice do little more than issue solidarity statements, with migrant justice organizations such as the Migrants Rights Network being one of the few groups to attempt to form coalitions with international students.

As such, international students have created their own social movement organizations, mobilizing members to seek better treatment of international students and, more importantly, contextualizing international students’ demands for “landed status” as part of rich, Western states’ obligations to primarily Global South workers who were pushed out of their countries because of Western neoliberal agendas. In doing so, these organizations take inspiration from migrant domestic workers’ movements, whose slogan “good enough to work, good enough to stay,” they have taken up as part of their calls for action.

Using discourse analysis and participant observation, this paper explores progressive and international students’ movement organizing, assessing their calls for more equitable ‘development’ and their fight against neoliberalism.

Youth leadership in addressing environmental racism and advancing climate justice is emerging as a critical pathway to decolonial futures. Indigenous youth are articulating visions that reimagine landscapes and energy technologies, challenging traditional power structures. Environmental racism intensifies the impacts of climate change on underprivileged populations, disproportionately affecting Indigenous peoples, communities of color, and the Global South through environmental degradation and resource disparities. This study examines the essential function of youth leadership in combating environmental racism and promoting climate justice, highlighting decolonial strategies for sustainable development. This study analyzes youth-led movements to elucidate novel solutions for addressing systemic disparities and promoting ecological and social justice. How youth from affected communities resist exploitative practices, advocate for inclusive climate policies, and promote "decolonial futures" by challenging dominant power structures, prioritizing Indigenous knowledge, and fostering youth leadership as a pathway to achieving equitable, sustainable, and resilient futures.

Over the decades, low-income countries, including those in Africa, have struggled to chart their own course with social and economic development without the undue influence and restrictions of neocolonial theories, frameworks, and Western hegemonies. These ill-fitting models have often yielded only marginal results while undermining local ways of knowing and doing. Over the last 30 years, Rwanda has intentionally innovated and adapted local values and practices into its Homegrown Solutions (HGS) programs to rebuild the country from the ashes of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and expand the HGS approach to overall socio-economic development. However, the HGS have not systematically been evaluated. Our study sought to address this gap by collecting data to help develop an evaluative framework. This paper will present the findings from literature reviews and qualitative interviews conducted with various subgroups of Rwandans, including 24 conceptualizers, government officers and technicians at the national level and 14 HGS implementing officers and beneficiaries at the district level. The project’s activities were guided by decolonial principles and values by which the team of Canadian and Rwandan researchers and local stakeholders worked together to co-create knowledge using concept mapping techniques. This presentation will discuss the concept mapping clusters generated to inform the development of a framework for HGS programs in Rwanda. Contributions to knowledge and implications for policymakers and practitioners will be discussed.

This paper argues for a holistic engagement with African Indigenous cultural knowledges, systems of thought, and communal philosophies as a means of exercising self determination within the local African context. Since the era of independence began, European colonial regimes have imposed a Eurocentric international development framework across the globe, a framework that is designed to advance Euro-American perspectives of modernity and humanity. In Africa, colonialism continues to masquerade as the only mode of achieving human advancement while surreptitiously instituting different species of the human. On one hand, colonialism categorizes the African as the subject of development, while on the other hand it designates Westerners as experts to conduct development work in Africa. My aim is to anchor the discussion of development in Africa in Indigenous cultural knowledges, systems of thought, and African traditions, thus engaging African epistemologies as a foundational knowledge base for African societies. This discussion will be guided by the following questions: What is the role of African cultural knowledges in local development initiatives? How can we resist the coloniality of international development? In what ways can we affirm Africa’s contributions to humanity? Can our collective histories, identities, and Indigenous knowledge systems serve as a decolonial dialectic that reimagines development in Africa?

Despite the growth of collaborative research in the global context, there is unequal power relationship between global Northern academic institutions and Southern partners (Connell, 2007; Nguyen, Stienstra, Gonick, Do, & Huynh, 2019). Power dynamics between researchers from knowledge-based institutions in the global North and academics and activists in the global South are usually displayed, and often reinforced, through the lack of opportunities for local partners in the global South to engage in partnership conversations. In the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2006), the question regarding how researchers from the global North can meaningfully engage academics and activists in the global South is critical.

Building on a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Carleton University's International Research Seed Grant, we conducted interviews with partners, academics, and activists from Vietnam, South Africa, and India. Specifically, we ask: 1) What barriers have partners from Global South encountered in their engagement with institutions in the Global North and with powerful stakeholders in their own contexts?; 2) What do they deem important to transform these power dynamics?; And 3) How can decolonial research practices resist the Western hegemony of knowledge production? The findings challenge the ongoing impact of coloniality in academia on knowledge production, highlighting patterns of patriarchy and ableism in the global North university. We argue for the need to recognize, centre and prioritise the diversity of knowledge and expertise of those in Global South, especially with marginalized peoples with disabilities in Southern spaces and contexts.

The following literature review critically examines the intersection between environmental peacebuilding and reconciliation processes in the settler-colonial context to identify frameworks and practices that facilitate sustainable, just, and inclusive processes. Reconciliation is an ongoing process of addressing historical injustices and transforming relationships to build and maintain a mutually respectful framework for living together. In the Canadian context, reconciliation is deeply intertwined with land, treaties, and Indigenous peoples’ rights for self-determination and self-governance. Environmental peacebuilding, as the collaborative management of natural resources, focuses on cooperation between conflicting parties around shared natural resources and offers a potential pathway for fostering meaningful engagement and repairing relationships. However, environmental peacebuilding has primarily focused on inter-state cases with heavy involvement of external actors, such as UN agencies, government agencies, and transnational NGOs, thus having limited explanatory power with very few studies on bottom-up processes. There is a need to focus more on bottom-up environmental peacebuilding to gain insight into how communities create environmental peace on their own terms. The literature review identified key challenges related to power relations that dominate environmental peacebuilding and the disparity between Western and Indigenous knowledge, reinforcing worldviews that produce socioecological injustice, especially in reconciliation processes. The environmental cooperation must be rooted in decolonial practices and recognition of Indigenous land rights to support reconciliation meaningfully.

North Central Nigeria continues to grapple with banditry and security crisis that has been traced to escalating conflicts between sedentary farmers and nomadic Fulani herders. Many communities have recently come under recurring cycle of violent attacks by organised criminal groups thereby elevating the conflicts to the level of a security crisis. The crisis has led to loss of many lives and livelihoods, and the destruction and displacement of communities in ways that signify serious depletion in the value of human lives. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the nexus between farmer herder conflict and the banditry crisis in the region and demonstrate how these twin problems constitute a major barrier to achieving the future we want- in which human lives are highly valued. Qualitative data were generated from in-depth interviews with farming and herding communities in three states of Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa. Findings revealed that multiple socio-economic, political and environmental factors are at the roots of the farmer-herder conflict and the current security crisis. These include perceived or real political and economic marginalization of groups, explosive growth in human and cattle population, scarcity of grazing lands, and deep seated ethnic and/or religious animosity between farming communities and Fulani herders. This implies that a major relationship that matters to both farmers and herders is relationship to land, water, and the environment more broadly. To end the crisis, there is the urgent need for the government and civil society to address the underlying socio-economic, political and environmental triggers.

One of the factors for development disparities can be traced to limitations on knowledge cooperation. At the international level, knowledge cooperation is manifested in the forms of collaborations, interactions, transfer, exchange etc. The extent of knowledge cooperation has been shaped by the rise of populist political regimes. The emerging collusion between the political and corporate actors appear to redefine and redraw the contour of interests and possibility of cooperation among nations. The shift in understanding of public good as inherent characteristic of a commodity (Samuelson) to dependent on policy (Marginson), adds another layer of complexity in our understanding of political economy of knowledge cooperation.

Such networks and power dynamics influence the production and distribution of knowledge through financing and modalities of cooperation. Considering political economy approach, universities and academic institutions appear important actors in knowledge cooperation as the producer of knowledge. The academia, corporations/industry and political actors acts as nodes of network spread across nations. The linkages among the actors stem from their interests and systems-legal, economic and political. The implementation of new public management (NPM) in functioning of universities and collusion between the industry and political regimes give rise to the practices leading to particular kinds of production and dissemination of knowledge. These practices under the influence of market-like management within universities, set norms and standards for market oriented research. Academic capitalism which gets strengthened with such practices lead to distortions in knowledge cooperation in the international networks. With the rise of populist governments, such distortions are supposed to be more severe in limiting counter hegemonic cooperation and emboldening power structures. This paper seeks to understand these developments and utilizes network externalities as theoretical framework to analyze the political economy of knowledge cooperation.

In his first visit to Russia after the start of the War in Ukraine Xi Jinping called Vladimir Putin his “dear friend.” An extensive narrative of historical “Close Friendship” underlies the Sino-Russian rapprochement and alliance. In my paper, based on local archival and fieldwork data I explore how and why the forgotten local monuments of the October Revolution have been recently rediscovered in Russia’s Ural region as new destinations for the Chinese “Red Tourism.” Since 2004 the Beijing authorities have developed a broad program of Red tourism in order to inculcate “red values” through popular visits to the heritage sites of the Communist Revolution but scholarship has not looked into these initiatives beyond Chinese borders. International experts have mostly focused on Moscow’s attempts to overcome the recent sanctions with import substitution programs, while much less attention has been paid to the attempts to export oriented development. Analyzing six monuments to Chinese soldiers of the Russian Civil War in Perm and Yekaterinburg regions, I argue that (a) the “Red Tourism” has recently become a memory export to Russia and resonated with Moscow’s attempts to facilitate export-oriented development, (b) it serves to (re-) invent Russia’s Communist tradition, and, thus, support the overarching narrative of the “Close Friendship,” (c) the “Red tourism” and the “Close Friendship” narrative are taking root in Russian regions, where (d) the bilateral memorial diplomacy and the (re-) discovery of the “red monuments” is supported by a variety of local actors (regional authorities, impoverished local intellectuals, local tourist entrepreneurs, chapters of the weakening Communist Party and the Society of the Russian-Chinese Friendship, and dwellers of gentrifying settlements) pursuing their own interests and preferences.

A 2008 report from the World Bank assessing poverty revealed that single-headed female households were among the poorest in Grenada. Ten years later, this statistic remained unchanged. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 1 aims to end poverty in all its forms, noting that the most vulnerable are women and girls. If single-headed female households are among the poorest, not just in Grenada but elsewhere, why do they remain understudied? Should we not try to use participatory and evidence-based research to help improve their lives and therefore reduce poverty? Support for Education, Empowerment and Development (SEED) is a Conditional Cash Transfer programme (CCTP) started by the government in Grenada to assist citizens who are struggling financially, including single mothers. The social, economic and political implications of CCTPs are well documented within development research, but not enough research has focused on the impact of CCTPS on the lives of single mothers. Studies focus on groups such as children, adolescents, households, and married women, while neglecting single mothers. Limited research on the experiences of single mothers reveals that they face discrimination, invisibilization and are stereotyped. Within development research, there is no mention of Grenada’s SEED programme. This research investigates the economic and social lives of single mother beneficiaries and their experiences. Convenient sampling was employed to recruit the participants, which included 20 current and former single mother beneficiaries of the SEED programme. Drawing from the preliminary findings, single motherhood for SEED beneficiaries is marred by struggles financially, socially and mentally. CCTPs are also burdensome for single mothers due to the added responsibility of fulfilling the conditions associated with these programmes. Overall, this study seeks to give voice and contribute to the literature of single mother beneficiaries and SEED with the aim of influencing future policies.

The 21st century has seen borders increasingly digitized, monitored, and enforced, raising critical questions about governance in a world dominated by technology. In Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God, biological and social borders collapse, exposing the coercive dynamics of state power over bodies and communities. Through surveillance, reproductive governance, and the shifting boundaries of humanity, the novel explores how systems of control disproportionately affect marginalized bodies. Nonetheless, the text gears me toward rethinking governance as a negotiable construct. It reveals how the boundaries between the human and the non-human, autonomy and state control, and survival and extinction are redefined in a time of crisis, allowing for a reconstitution of power. My analysis will demonstrate that, in Future Home of the Living God, governance is not a fixed structure but one that can be renegotiated, revealing both the vulnerabilities and possibilities inherent in these transformations. Drawing on posthumanist thought, I consider the novel’s treatment of posthuman bodies, as well as what governance might look like when the boundaries between the human, the non-human, and the technological become porous.

Despite repeated exposure to severe storms, Cuba’s distinctive disaster management model has continued to be extremely successful. Through policy, risk reduction, and mass participation, an organized and effective system has been developed to protect the population. This paper will examine the efficacy of Cuba’s approach to disaster management which is not only reliant on efficiency but also on socio-cultural values of solidarity and participation. More specifically, I will explore the underlying cultures that inform, support, and propel Cuba’s disaster management procedures. I argue that Cuba’s disaster preparedness, response, and recovery practices are grounded within the value and action of solidarity, which is unique within the context of disaster management. Solidarity is noticeably present in all areas of the country’s disaster management system and is highlighted throughout all levels of Cuban society – from interactions between neighbours to governmental policies. With solidarity at the centre of Cuba’s disaster management system, this paper will demonstrate that policy has the capacity to change values and behaviours, and, in turn, values and behaviours can change policy. Global disaster management is now urgent, and diverse strategies must be explored to address climate change. The Cuban model acts as an example of successful disaster management and offers insight into the transformative role of solidarity and how it can be reproduced in other social contexts. Through examining how the discourse and action of solidarity in disaster management are realized in government policy, mass media representation and grassroots perceptions and actions, this paper will make a new contribution to understanding the subject in Cuba and beyond.

In the central highlands of Guatemala, the increasing variability of weather and the growing severity of climatic stresses are widely recognized as a significant threat to the region’s economically important horticultural sector and the livelihoods of the predominantly indigenous peasant agricultural producers who cultivate the vast majority of the sector’s fresh fruits and vegetables, which are primarily destined for export markets. To address these risks, Guatemala’s semi-public agricultural development bank, Banrural, has partnered with the non-profit Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organization to provide vulnerable small-scale agricultural producers with an index-based agricultural insurance product known as Produce Seguro (PS). Similar to other index-based weather insurance products, PS benefits policyholders when select weather-related measures deviate from their historical norms. Despite promises of security, clients of PS remain highly susceptible to a host of environmental stresses, including those covered by their insurance policies. In this paper I explain why, focusing upon the historical role that public and private household debts have played in the development of Guatemala’s horticultural export sector and the vulnerability of its peasant agricultural producers. By channeling insurance payments to policyholders’ outstanding loan balances at Banrural, PS is founded upon an implicit understanding of how climatic stresses intersect with the stresses of debt that burden most horticultural farming households. Yet, drawing upon interview and survey data, I argue that the insurance is primarily oriented towards alleviating the threats that a changing climate pose to the bank’s loan portfolio rather than the threats it poses for peasant livelihoods.

Cette étude, basée sur une enquête auprès de 1233 producteurs de manioc au Cameroun, analyse l'effet de l'adoption des semences améliorées de manioc (MAPM) sur la résilience climatique. L'approche économétrique employée repose sur un modèle probit bivarié récursif, permettant l'estimation des effets marginaux et des effets de traitement. Les résultats révèlent un effet positif de l’adoption du MAPM sur la résilience face aux chocs de sécheresse et d’inondation. D'une part, on relève que l’accès à l’électricité ainsi que l’expérience du producteur dans l’activité agricole sont les principaux facteurs ayant une influence sur l’adoption du MAPM. Il est de ce fait formulé quelques recommandations de nature à améliorer l’adoption des semences de qualité et échapper aux chocs liés au changement climatique.

Urban heat stress is projected to rise sharply by 2050, posing significant challenges to economic, societal, and environmental sustainability, yet cooling remains a neglected issue in global development discourses, with no explicit mention in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or their 169 targets. Small states in the Global South, particularly in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, face a unique dilemma as they navigate the intersection of rapid urbanization, thermal vulnerability, and aspirations for international recognition. Qatar exemplifies this tension, using energy-intensive cooling solutions to support its ambitions of hosting prestigious global events, such as the 2022 FIFA World Cup and the upcoming 2030 Asian Games. These efforts have shifted cooling strategies from indoor spaces to large-scale outdoor environments, reflecting a model of development heavily reliant on energy subsidies and resource-intensive practices. This approach underscores a critical tension between local efforts to achieve global prestige and the broader imperative to align with sustainable development goals. By examining Qatar’s trajectory, this paper highlights the need for small states to rethink their reliance on energy-intensive cooling systems and adopt sustainable, equitable solutions that balance their development aspirations with global sustainability commitments.

This paper explores embodied perspectives on climate change in aquaculture through the lens of feminist political ecology (FPE), highlighting the intersections of gender, power, and environmental change. Aquaculture, as a rapidly growing sector addressing global food security, is deeply affected by climate change, yet the experiences and contributions of marginalized groups, particularly women, remain underrepresented in policy and research. Drawing on FPE, this study examines how gendered bodies and labour are differentially impacted by climate-driven shifts in aquaculture production, including resource access, adaptation strategies, and decision-making.

FPE underscores how power dynamics shape access to aquaculture resources, training, and technologies, particularly for women, who are often constrained by discriminatory norms and relegated to informal or low-value roles. These limitations exacerbate vulnerabilities to climate change, as women’s work in aquaculture—frequently involving small-scale, homestead-based operations—faces compounded risks from extreme weather, resource depletion, and market fluctuations. Additionally, the study explores the anxieties and emotions of fish farmers as they face increasing uncertainties in their aquaculture livelihoods.

By foregrounding the embodied and situated knowledge of women and other marginalized groups, this study seeks to illuminate the ways in which gender, nature and bodies are implicated in aquaculture and the precarities of climate change. This approach advocates for inclusive, gender-responsive climate adaptation strategies that recognize and address structural inequities in resource distribution and decision-making. Ultimately, the paper contributes to broader efforts to reimagine sustainable aquaculture development through equity-focused and ecologically mindful frameworks.

Over the last two decades, skyrocketing global demand due to capitalist forms of accumulation has caused an uptick in the extraction of natural resources in the Amazon and other regions worldwide. Without critically addressing the capitalist system of accumulation as the incentivizing factor behind the extractive process, the numerous social and environmental problems caused by ongoing extraction will continue. This presents an important question; is the prevention of environmental degradation and improvement of livelihoods possible in the present capitalist world? This paper argues that Indigenous, racialized, and feminist forms of resistance successfully contribute to environmental and social prosperity because of their refusal to abide by the capitalist system and their envisionment for the future. The analysis is informed by a combination of ethnographic material from the Amazonian regions, works written about the extractive process more broadly in Latin America or elsewhere, and current grey literature reports. The longue duree of capitalist accumulation and extraction is explored, rooted in colonial and imperial ideologies to understand how inequality and exploitation are embedded. This is followed by an exploration of how Indigenous, racialized, and feminist groups have refused the neoliberal capitalist system and envisioned new future imaginaries. In particular, this is facilitated through the use of organized coalitions, social movements (including racialized and feminist resistance), and Indigenous “artivism”.

For over fifty years, International Development Studies (IDS) programs have been a vital component of Canada's higher education landscape, providing interdisciplinary perspectives on pressing global challenges. The field now stands at a critical juncture. This roundtable brings together IDS scholars to reflect on the evolving landscape of the discipline, offering a space to examine current challenges and envision pathways for the future of teaching IDS in Canada. The discussion will address both structural and pedagogical issues facing IDS programs. Participants will examine the implications of local and global circumstances that have contributed to budget cuts and declines in enrolment. In response to these challenges, the roundtable will explore innovative approaches to strengthening the field, including the creation of novel curricula, experiential learning opportunities, and the potential for cross-institutional coalitions to foster the relevance of IDS in an era of transformative change. By taking stock of IDS’s achievements and struggles, participants will collaboratively explore the potential for IDS to equip the next generation of researchers and activists with the knowledge and skills needed to address growing global inequities. The session invites educators and administrators from Canadian universities and colleges with a history of teaching IDS at the undergraduate and/or graduate level to share their experiences and visions. Ultimately, this roundtable aims to reimagine how IDS programs can continue to thrive and contribute effectively to higher education in Canada and beyond.

Globally, the IMF and World Bank-led liberalization of the mining industry in the 1980s and 1990s was a significant milestone with billions of dollars invested across the developing world. Importantly, it promised jobs, revenue and community development to affected countries. In many countries including Ghana, however, there remain concerns about how to bring real development to local communities after more than three decades of establishing the Minerals Development Fund (MDF) in 1993 and its parliamentary approval in 2016. Continued concerns about revenue management include political control of the allocation process, corruption and the lack of transparency in the use of funds. Given these issues, this article proposes participatory budgeting as the framework/solution to address these challenges and ensure that local communities maximize the benefits from mining since they are the most affected by the negative impacts of mining such as environmental pollution and displacement of people. Participatory budgeting is a process that allows local communities to identify and allocate resources to address their unique needs publicly. It has been successfully used in many cities globally including Porto Alegre, New York, Dundee, etc. It involves several stages (timelines) including forming a proposal collation team and the guiding rules, collating proposed projects by community members, organizing public voting on projects and funding (implementation) and evaluation. Its strengths over the current mechanism contained in the Minerals Development Fund (MDF) Act of 2016 include grassroots participation and consensus building leading to implementing community-chosen projects, enhancing transparency and accountability and promoting community acceptance of mining activities.

In this paper, I provide insights into the extractivist pressures on the southern Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and what this means for ecological communities, rural livelihoods, and collective social action. Stretching from southern Costa Rica into western Panamá is the Cordillera de Talamanca Mountain range, a global biodiversity hotspot that has been stewarded for over 12,000 years by generations of Indigenous communities. Forty years ago, this region was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Transboundary Protected Area to be managed by both states as a symbol of peace and friendship. La Amistad International Park and its surrounding Biosphere Reserves, Indigenous territories, Buffer and Transition Zones have not only garnered the attention of conservationists, researchers, and tourists, but of developers. Primary factors affecting the Park include encroachment, agricultural plantations and cattle ranching, timber extraction, the Trans-Panamá Pipeline, and hydroelectric dams. Guided by the wisdom and objectives of Ngäbe leaders, with whom I have established relationships, this research seeks to co-create and mobilize knowledge in support of Indigenous food sovereignty, rural economies, and governance that enable biocultural diversity and sustainable development. A theoretical framework grounded in political ecology, agrarian political economy, and cultural ecology will be operationalized through a mixed-methods approach combining primary and secondary data from official government and corporate reports, legal and policy frameworks, NGO and conservation project documents, academic and newspaper publications. Ethnographic research and community-based digital storytelling will be carried out through participant observation, semi-structured interviews and oral histories with key counterparts and community members from areas near extractive industries as well as those promoting and practicing forms of food sovereignty. Applying the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, Ngäbe counterparts will create their own stories that express the convergences and contradictions for sustainable development and food sovereignty in and around UNESCO La Amistad Biosphere Reserve.

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) represents an important source of livelihood across the Global South. ASM is usually outside of the formal economy and associated with various challenges. Lately, these challenges have been mainly attributed to its status as an informal activity. Various countries have implemented national formalization policies aiming to alleviate the issues in this sector. In this paper, I use the case study of the Peruvian (in)formalization process to argue that the formalization of ASM is a frontier moment. This is supported by qualitative field research conducted in 2023 in informal copper ASM operations in Peru, with a following the thing methodology, from inside the mines to port of export. Borrowing from political ecology’s understanding of frontiers, I illustrate the challenges and implications of this frontier moment, as ASM producers are both formal and illegal at the same time, working under an artificial formalization status. Under this status, ASM producers experience the challenges involved with operating in the informal market, but their products enter the global supply of “critical” minerals in legal form. I conclude with a discussion over the implications that this frontier moment can have in terms of resource governance and global development.

This Author Meets Critics session engages with an edited volume produced by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (Bloomsbury, July 2025), compiling Southern Feminist critiques of the policy responses and social mobilizations that happened in the context of the COVID-19 crisis in twelve countries of the so-called global south.

At the beginning, the COVID19 pandemic was framed as an opportunity to transform global power structures, a transformative portal as Arundhati Roy famously described it. However, as the pandemic continued, it became clearer that it exacerbated pre-existing social, economic and political crises. Executive powers were expanded to respond to a global health emergency, economic processes were temporarily halted, public expenditures were redirected and the mobilities of significant portions of society were constrained to stop the virus. Not all governments had the same resources at their disposal or were at the same starting point. However, how they reacted to this shock was telling of long-term policy trajectories, their disposition towards feminist redistributive justice and commitment to democratic practices, both domestically and transnationally. Furthermore, their policy responses reflected the uneven leeway available to different governments based on their financial liquidity and the unequal power dynamics that characterize the global sphere.

With a foreword written by Gita Sen, the twelve chapters of the book were written by southern feminists based in the global south, focusing on austerity, care and social protection, labour rights and human mobilities in times of COVID19 in Chile, Bolivia, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Ghana, South Africa, China, India, Fiji, Malaysia and Kiribati.

Tourism is Jamaica’s “bread and butter” – producing approximately 50 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange inflow and generating more than 350,000 jobs annually (Silvera, 2020). In the current context, tourism has become the driving industry of Jamaica’s economic development plans. Yet, the profits and benefits of the industry are unevenly distributed across workers, communities and national borders (Lewis, 2014). Using the craft industry – with a central focus on the craft market – as an entry point, this paper offers an analysis of the production of multi-scalar uneven development within racial capitalism. Drawing on primary data from ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with craft traders and producers as well as textual analysis of archival data, the paper argues that the everyday lives of handicraft workers make visible the socio-spatial relations of difference that produce and undergird (inter)national economic development processes and reproduce uneven development across multiple scales. In particular, the paper examines the role of the state in racial capital’s production of uneven development in Jamaica’s tourism industry. This intervention links micropolitics to macroprocesses, taking up theorizations across Caribbean studies, postcolonial theory, feminist political economy and Black geographies. Finally, by attending to the quotidian, the paper affirms the need to be attentive to the ways in which the project of economic development recruits and (re)makes “hierarchies of all kinds of difference” (Goffe and Luke, 2024) across scales.

Rural youth studies identify that rural youth aspirations and life-courses are dynamic and change over time. They are the outcome of the relationship between their context and individual as well as collective agency. However, few studies have explored how different social characteristics (e.g. age, sex) might influence the develop of aspirations, and how these characteristics and the relationship with context, where violence is a cross-cutting variable, could exacerbate power imbalances. In regions where licit and illicit economies coexist, the exercise of agency by rural youth becomes an act of rebellion. My study employs an “I will be” method, grounded in Possible Selves theory, agency, and intersectionality, to explore the aspirations and life trajectories of rural youth in La India, Colombia, from their own perspective.

Findings reveal a significant tension between the aspirations of young men and women and the perceived attainability of their goals considering their age, sex and living conditions. In these communities, youth participation is limited, with their voices marginalized by social norms shaped by violence and historical conflict. This is particularly pronounced for young women, those without social support networks, and young adults living independently. Understanding the factors influencing rural youth decision-making is essential for developing context-appropriate policies and programs that can support their aspirations and provide pathways to meaningful change.

The Caribbean and Latin America have entered the third generation of regionalism. It is markedly decolonial, and proffers counter-dependency as the raison d’être of south-south cooperation. This neo-Gramscian approach orients us to consider the whole context of ideas and institutions within which the production of material goods takes place. The strategy of scaling deep to reframe stories, spread big cultural ideas, and invest in transformative learning at the sociocultural levels of individuals, organisations, and communities is a vital part of this innovation.

The study utilises an innovation systems approach, which considers new modes of knowledge production that emphasise collaboration and contextual embeddedness. It identifies and discusses how on-going Jamaica-Colombia development cooperation in cultural policy and programming can be aided by public sector innovation (PSI) labs as a policy tool. The analysis addresses civil society’s roles as knowledge producers, managers, and intermediaries in the PSI lab “tentative governance” processes of experimentation, learning, and reflexivity.

The case for a transformative learning and scaling deep PSI lab approach to Jamaica-Colombia cooperation is developed through a literature review and thematic analysis of 24 semi-structured interviews with civil society workers from Kingston, Jamaica and Bogotá and San Andrés, Colombia. This multidisciplinary policy study adds to the evolving field of knowledge for development.

The Canadian Journal of Development Studies (CJDS) is working to incorporate the principles of decolonization into the everyday practice of the journal. In this interactive, roundtable discussion, CJDS editors will share challenges and strategies and invite suggestions and feedback from participants. Anyone interested in the CJDS, academic publishing and the politics of global knowledge production should join us.

NGOs are perceived as organisations that are always seeking funding. However, there are many instances where donations are refused by NGOs. This counter-intuitive decision, given the often grave humanitarian needs, is not well documented beyond brief references or individual cases. Refusal is an expression of values and principles, important for actors that are often portrayed as having little to no agency or power in relation to donors. We developed a database of 32 examples of funding refusals by NGOs detailing the reasons for refusal. To classify and compare the refusals, we developed a preliminary typology of NGO motivations for donor refusal, which contains four types (independence, impartiality, neutrality, and humanity) that align with humanitarian principles. Each category and type are defined and examples of each are provided. Given the focal nature of NGOs in development activity, the lack of attention to funding refusal is notable. We address this lacuna by creating a database and developing a preliminary typology to provide a foundation for future research. This study contributes a novel typology to an under-studied topic. In so doing, this paper provides a foundation for studies of refusal to follow.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was concern that small and medium-sized Canadian development organisations (SMOs) would not be able to survive the expected funding losses associated with this period and would ultimately be forced to shut down. With COVID-19 now (largely) behind us, this paper explores how these organisations experienced the pandemic period. It utilizes data gathered between 2020 and 2024, including 278 survey responses and 51 interviews with Canadian SMOs. It reveals that, despite early fears over the ability of SMOs to survive the pandemic, these organisations were able to meaningfully apply key principles of adaptability and flexibility in order to establish organisational resilience in the face of this global crisis. There is a broad perception within the global development sector that SMOs are vulnerable entities that lack resilience. These organisations, however, were successful in adapting to their new reality and they effectively navigated the pandemic period. In spite of their success, SMOs did not change their perspective on the strength and resilience of smaller organisations as a whole, but rather framed themselves as exceptions. Looking forward, respondents in a final round of interviews in 2024 noted that, while we may be in a post-pandemic period, COVID-19 resulted in lasting changes within the global development sector which continue to create challenges for SMOs. Of highest concern are a continued decline in donations to international causes and rising program costs due to heightened inflation.

Heeding the call by Abebe et al., to “bridge the gaps between childhood studies and development studies” (2024, 1), this research paper aspires to facilitate best child-centred NGO policies and practices in international development. The coming together of these fields may generate critical interdisciplinary possibilities for advancing the rights of children around the world.

Building upon the New Sociology of Childhood paradigm (Canosa & Graham, 2020; James & Prout, 2015), this study incorporates Childism as an innovative theoretical framework that critiques the hierarchical relationship between adults and children and strives to facilitate children’s voices (Biswas, 2024; Wall, 2022) for global development. Alongside Childism as a theoretical approach, this research project also implements Child Rights Impact Assessments (CRIAs). CRIAs are “a systematic process or methodology of ensuring children’s best interests and the potential impacts of policy change upon them are considered in the policy-making process” (UNICEF Canada, 2024).

Therefore, theoretically informed by Childism and practically supported by CRIAs, this research project examines the extent to which child-centred global development NGOs uphold the rights of children and youth in their policies and practices. This idiographic study utilizes purposive and snowball sampling to facilitate qualitative interviews asking semi-structured questions with adults and youth representing child-centred NGOs. The findings reveal how key informants conceptualize the role of children and youth in international development, the barriers that their age renders upon them, and solutions for advancing children and youth engagement in global development policies and practices.

In response to rapid and complex changes in the international environment and Canada’s social fabric, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) launched in 2023 the “Future of Diplomacy: Transforming GAC”, a multi-year organizational strategy to revitalize Canadian diplomacy and the Department’s efforts as a whole, so that they are better adapted to new and emerging global realities.

With respect to development and international assistance, one of GAC’s core responsibilities, the Future of Diplomacy has many ramifications, including modernizing Canada’s international assistance management tools and processes, and updating the training offered to employees working as international assistance officers.

In this context, the aim of the proposed paper is to present the first phase (January to May 2025) of work carried out by a team within the Canadian Foreign Service Institute to identify the knowledge, skills and attitudes required by the Department’s international assistance officers, and what this may raise in terms of challenges and opportunities.

Through a needs assessment, this team will seek to answer the following research questions: What knowledge, skills and attitudes are required by Canadian international assistance officers to work effectively today and in the years to come? What approaches to workplace training and learning would be most appropriate?

Several methods will be used to answer the research questions: an analysis of strategic frameworks; a literature review; a reflection on our current training practices; internal consultations with members of the Advisory Committee on International Assistance Learning, with employees and their managers; interviews with key informants; and observation/shadowing.

This presentation examines the potential of feminist institutionalism to the study of the institutions of transitional justice (TJ) in Southern and post-conflict contexts. Engaging broadly with both feminist institutionalism and TJ literature, I investigate the contribution of feminist institutionalist analyses in assessing the transformative character of TJ processes in the Global South. I raise the question of how feminist institutionalism is positioned vis-à-vis other theoretical frameworks in analyzing the issues that accompany the implementation of TJ models that stem from peace agreements in post-conflict contexts. I put forward the argument that although feminist institutionalism is well positioned to help with the study of the TJ institutions, this framework could benefit from drawing on other conceptualizations of feminism (like Indigenous or Southern feminism) and from incorporating an intersectional perspective in its analytical approaches. I conclude that accounting for the experiences of black, Indigenous, poor and other marginalized women in the periphery will allow the feminist institutionalism scholarship to better theorize on the gendered nature of TJ institutions and increase its chances to drive positive gender change in the Global South. I illustrate my theoretical arguments with the case study of Colombia’s TJ model.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) poses new dangers and new peacekeeping opportunities for Women, Peace, and Security (WPS). How can AI policies, practices and regulations ensure that this technology promotes inclusivity and well- being for all, rather than amplifying discrimination and insecurity? An overview of the current challenges, policy frameworks, and areas for improvement of AI and WPS is included to inform individuals and policymakers of ways to reduce harmful impacts of AI. Recommendations are based on a comprehensive analysis of the current policy landscape and academic literature on AI's challenges, advantages, and regulations. The key findings are that International policy and regulation of AI has improved, however, more effort is needed to ensure accountability, awareness, and responsible use of AI in compliance with WPS efforts. Data discrimination causes more gendered exclusion, stereotyping, and insecurity. Furthermore, AI tools, AI surveillance, and the military applications of AI pose unique threats to the WPS agenda, but AI can also be used deliberately for conflict prevention, response, and recovery. Hence, this paper makes multiple recommendations for policymakers to ensure that AI concerns are integrated into WPS policy and vice versa.

This paper explores potential contradictions between Canada’s “feminist” aid and its leading role in the mining industry globally. While under the previous conservative government, Canadian foreign aid was more explicitly aligned with mining and commercial interests (Brown, 2015), the election of the Trudeau Liberal government appeared to signal a return to more “progressive” ideals. The launch of the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) in 2017 represented a powerful symbol in this direction. Some critics have highlighted the lack of policy coherence between its feminist commitments in the aid sector on the one hand, and its policies and actions in other sectors (including trade and security) on the other. Less attention has been given to mining extractivism in relation with the FIAP. Despite Canadian mining companies’ involvement in serious human rights violations in various countries (Areguy, 2021; Justice & Corporate Accountability Project, 2023), the current Liberal government has continued to actively support mining extractivism abroad. Informed by transnational feminist perspectives and indigenous feminist theories, I explore the links and continuities between settler colonialism, mining extractivism and “feminist” aid in the context of Peru. I tentatively argue that Canada’s FIAP and support of the mining industry are not necessarily in contradiction if they are understood as being shaped by settler coloniality. Using Peru as a case study, this paper is based on secondary sources, including scholarly and grey literature and government sources.

The power of oral story-telling is universal as it is a phenomenon existing in every culture around the world. However, it is an underused approach in international development projects that engage with the cultures of the countries in which they operate. Story-telling can: a) shift mindsets through processes of unlearning and learning, b) strengthen connections and ally-ships, c) surface social injustices and barriers to change, and c) build personal and collective agency and voice.

The workshop will begin with a short synopsis of how story-telling engages and disrupts thinking. Illustrative examples from public health projects in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and the People’s Republic of China will be used. Nancy will share story-telling techniques from her play “Rethinking Good Intentions”. Diana Kaliza and potentially, a third person, will share their own experiences with story-telling from their respective countries. Workshop participants will discuss the power of story-telling, consider ways to integrate story-telling approaches in their research and community work, and try out techniques for oral story-telling. Participants will be asked to consider how they can apply learning from the workshop to initiatives in which they are engaged.

This research examines the representation of colonial and decolonial histories within Canadian International Development Studies (IDS) curricula. Through a review of 59 first and second year Canadian IDS syllabi, this chapter argues that while colonial history receives substantial attention, decolonial history often remains marginal or is introduced only in advanced courses. This approach risks reinforcing colonial epistemologies and can limit students’ critical engagement with alternative historical narratives and perspectives from the Global South. The analysis reveals that decolonial history, when included, tends to be compartmentalized, missing opportunities for integration into foundational courses. This selective inclusion shapes students’ understanding of global power structures, often leaving them with a predominantly colonial framing. The chapter advocates for a more balanced and integrated approach, positioning decolonial history alongside colonial history in early courses to facilitate a comprehensive view of the complexities and legacies of colonialism. By integrating both histories across the curriculum, Canadian IDS programs can better equip students to engage critically with global issues, acknowledging not only the historical roots of development but also alternative, decolonial paths forward.

This chapter investigates the epistemic landscape of introductory International Development Studies (IDS) reading lists in Canadian undergraduate programs, focusing on the representation of Global North and Global South knowledge sources. Drawing on a review of 59 syllabi and 2,055 assigned readings from 2018–2023, the analysis reveals a pronounced dominance of Global North sources, accounting for 92.4% of all assigned materials, with the UK and US leading. This geographical imbalance persists across all source categories, including academic publications, multimedia, and creative works. Despite the field's focus on the Global South, materials from Southern publishers constitute a mere 2.7% of the total. These findings raise critical questions about the implications of epistemic dominance for students' understanding of expertise, potentially reinforcing biases that marginalize Southern voices and perspectives. To address this disparity, the chapter advocates for the integration of diverse Global South sources and media types, alongside curricular reforms aimed at fostering epistemic inclusivity. By critically engaging with the politics of knowledge production, this study contributes to ongoing discussions on decolonizing academic curricula and diversifying global development education.

The world is facing a myriad of global challenges, including threats to multilateralism and a rule-based international order, global conflicts, pandemics, socioeconomic crises, climate change, regional conflicts, etc. This has significantly impacted the global compact around international development. There is a dwindling appetite among citizens of Global North for overseas development assistance and a loss of faith in grand narratives like liberal capitalism or communism. At the same time, post-colonial critics (including feminist scholars) have undermined faith in international development, arguing that they are instruments of neocolonialism or, at best, the misguided modernized notion of ‘white men’s burden’ where knowledge production has been restricted and defined to privileged Western ideologies. Unfortunately, given the global crisis that we face, with impending climate disasters and billions of people still under the poverty line, we are in dire need of an effective global compact. We need to reimagine Development as Hope, characterized by "informed naivety" or "pragmatic idealism," embodying the hopefulness of modernist thinking while acknowledging complexity and uncertainty. A return to the grand narrative that we can solve these global issues without the naivety of modernism nor the cynicism or skepticism of post-modernism. The main task of this paper is to explore how philosophical principles of Metamodernism, such as Metaxis, Pragmatic Idealism, Epistemological Flexibility, Oscillations, etc., could reimagine and reinvigorate modern development discourse. The paper will mainly focus on gender, evaluation theories, and climate issues as primary case examples of where Metamodernist thinking could positively contribute to International Development discourse, contrasting it with modernist thinking and postmodernist criticism.

Contributing to ongoing conversations about the decolonization of International Development Studies programs, this study examines student perceptions on the integration of Indigenous content in the undergraduate curriculum in the School of International Development and Global Studies (SIDGS) at the University of Ottawa (uOttawa). The University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual (English/French) university in the world, located on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation and is home to Canada’s largest department of international development studies. Understanding student experiences and perspectives is vital for the creation of a curriculum with meaningful integration of Indigenous content. This conference paper will (1) describe students’ experiences engaging with Indigenous content within the International Development and Global Studies undergraduate program (DVM); (2) identify perceived gaps in SIDGS undergraduate course offerings and; (3) analyze student-driven ideas for addressing these gaps. This study draws on surveys with DVM undergraduate students; academic roundtables (focus groups); and a collaborative workshop at uOttawa’s 2025 International Development Week. By highlighting student voices and opinions, the study offers important insights on creating a more inclusive and well-rounded approach to the Indigenization of International Development Studies in Canadian higher education. The study methodology also demonstrates an innovative approach to undergraduate student-led research on evaluating student perspectives on their university programs, and the ways in which they seek to shape their education.

In order for the current challenges of global governance to be effectively dealt with and a possible new world order to arise, International law must be restructured. The after-mentioned restructuring must possess a decolonized understanding of human rights, a central focus on environmental conservation, a redefining of international actors, and an expansion to include economic actors under international law, a prime example being Multinational Corporations (MNCs). Through a comparison of neoliberal, decolonial, and ecofeminist theoretical frameworks, I will examine the case of the Royal Dutch Shell PLC versus the Olgae community in the International Court of Justice to better understand the failure of the current international judiciary. The case of Shell versus the Olgae community concerns the environmental degradation of Olgae farmland and drinking water by Shell due to the MNC's lack of standard safety practices abroad. Shell's extensive pollution has made the land inhabitable and an active threat to local health. This critical case showcases areas of improvement within the international legal system and the untapped potential that an international judiciary has to reshape global norms and cement the strategic maintenance of international activity. I plan to debunk the entrenched idea that human rights depend on citizenship and that economic actors exist outside the political sphere, unrestrained by global governing bodies. The international legal system must be restructured to better encompass humanity and reframe our relationship with the land to more effectively manage the growing crisis under which current international legal bodies are buckling. International law is a central player when approaching multifaceted international crises and must be subject to continual evolution to protect those disenfranchised by colonialism's legacy, a legacy that current international legal bodies fail to combat.

Amid global crises – pandemics, climate change, conflicts, and rising inequality – economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights are critical for fostering resilience and addressing systemic injustices. These crises highlight the interdependence of all human rights and reveal gaps in international cooperation. As the world’s largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA), the European Union (EU) advocates for a rights-based approach to development; however, in practice, its policies often treat ESC rights as societal goals, with the term “human rights” largely focused on civil and political (CP) rights.

Drawing on Amartya Sen’s concept of human rights’ universality and indivisibility as well as critiques of ESC rights as aspirational, this paper critically examines the EU’s positioning within this spectrum. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), it investigates how human rights are treated across three established policy levels: 1) official commitments and rhetoric, 2) policy instruments, and 3) field-level realities. The methodology emphasizes the sociocultural and political contexts in which these texts were created, unpacking their intertextuality and the implicit power relations they reflect.

Findings reveal that while the EU rhetorically upholds the indivisibility of rights, ESC rights are instrumentalized for economic growth and poverty reduction rather than treated as enforceable obligations. This prioritization of CP rights reflects deeper geopolitical and historical legacies, undermining the universality of the EU’s commitments.

This research fills a critical gap by situating ESC rights within the development context, where the EU’s “soft power” shapes global human rights discourse. It highlights discrepancies between policy rhetoric and implementation, offering actionable insights for EU policymaking. By exploring the ethical dimensions of ESC rights in crisis contexts, this paper contributes to global debates on reimagining human rights and their role in development, questioning whether the marginalization of ESC rights signals an erosion of the human rights era.

Some Central American communities affected by Development Finance Institution (DFI)-funded projects have grown frustrated with engaging DFI-established independent complaint mechanisms to seek redress for human rights and environmental harms. Often these harms involve private sector actors, including financial intermediaries or private banks, via blended finance mechanisms that create additional concerns of transparency, disclosure, and project reporting.

This paper examines the case of small farmers in the Aguan Valley region in Honduras. After years of experiencing violence related to land conflicts and a World Bank-International Finance Corporation (IFC)-funded private African palm company, the farmers settled with the IFC in an unprecedented legal case in the United States. The paper examines the gains and failures of engaging voluntary or ‘soft’ law complaint mechanisms, the limitations of ‘hard’ law alternatives, and the increasing complexities of the growing role of the private sector via blended finance mechanisms in projects in weak governance zones. The research offers valuable lessons to DFI-affected communities, advocates and policy makers while identifying some of the convoluted and complex financial configurations of DFI loans that raise additional concerns for accountability under the expansion of blended finance in international development.

International development is rooted in international human rights law. The human rights-based approach to development emphasizes the relationship between development, human rights, and global justice. The general principles for international law and development include universalism, non-discrimination and self-determination. Feminism, and the global feminist movement, advocates for women’s rights and justice. However, in the past year, specifically with the genocide in Gaza, we observed that the international legal standard and procedures to uphold human rights and dignity are being either suspended or systematically undermined. Selective enforcement of universal principles erodes the integrity of the international human rights system and raises serious doubts about its credibility. Additionally, there was a troubling reaction from many in the feminist community, including silence, division, and even the legitimization of the atrocities that women face. This silence and lack of empathy raises questions about critical principles frequently emphasized by feminim, such as justice, universalism, and intersectionality.

This session will explore the implications of this global paradox, particularly its impact on the study of international development. What would emerge from this lack of trust in long-accepted global principles, and the “suspension” of what feminism stands for in the case of Palestine?

Partisanism and ethnic chauvinism have seen the willingness to trade-off democratic principles for potentially conflicting considerations such as political ideology and policy preferences in Africa. It is confirmed that ethnic chauvinism has thwarted the progress of democracy in the continent. As ethnic groups are caught in a reciprocal struggle for power to secure the interests of their group which in certain parts of the continent has witnessed an unprecedented rise of authoritarian leaders who defy democracy. In response, scholars and organizations are pursuing innovations to strengthen democracy in Africa. This study explores the causes of democratic backsliding in Africa and identify solutions to build more resilient democracy in the continent. However, the imperatives of partisanism and ethnic chauvinism are far more demanding than the claims of democracy. In the context of the precedent, this study seeks to answer the following research questions; What is the origin of partisanism and ethnic chauvinism in Africa? How has partisan politics and ethnic chauvinism reshaped patterns of political behaviour in Africa? What are the solutions to build more resilient democracy in Africa? Answers to these questions would be obtained through extensive literature review of secondary data that comprise of journal articles, government publications, websites, books and other relevant sources.

How have the dominant development theories negatively shaped Africa’s development trajectory? Are there more appropriate approaches to thinking about Africa’s development? Are Africa’s development challenges due to ideological and cultural backwardness, sustained impacts of imperialism, disparaging global perception shaped by dominant representations or the continent’s elite’s uncritical adoption of Western ideologies and narratives? This paper explores some post-colonial African perspectives on development theories, policies and practices and their political and socio-economic implications for Africa. It argues that post-colonial Africa is a product of transculturation. Suggesting that we cannot understand Africa’s development circumstances and trajectory through only the pre-colonial or Western modernity lens but through local knowledge, everyday people’s experiences, and empirical data on current trends.

Creating appropriate and effective development theories for Africa depends on balancing dominant development thinking that usually focuses on growth and modernity with antagonists’ views, such as postcolonialism and post-development schools that advocate local alternatives. This essay focuses on three factors (culture, identity politics, and representations) that impact African development thinking and practices. It draws attention to the importance and validity of African indigenous knowledge and development approaches.

This article presents what we miss when we caricature Africa either through a Western modernity lens or through the scope of postcolonialism. It offered some explanations by African scholars for the current growth stage of Africa outside of the dominant narratives and theories. A review of old and recent scholarly publications shows that African development is characterized by building a strong sense of solidarity and harmony. Development is driven by a strong sense of ownership and interconnectedness at interpersonal, societal, national, regional, and continental levels. African development literature shows that Africa's development is motivated by resistance to internal and external exploiters and building credible institutions rather than foreign aid as a priority for development in Africa.

When South Africa transitioned from Apartheid rule to democratic governance in 1994. It became a new nation. The first democratically elected President-Nelson Mandela described South Africa as the ‘rainbow nation.’ It represents a fundamental shift across the country’s sociopolitical and geographical landscapes. As unity replaced segregation, equality replaced legislated racism and democracy replaced apartheid. There was a recognition that collective well-being and togetherness have direct relationship to individual well-being. Hence, the term ‘ubuntu’ - “I am because you are” was coined to strengthen togetherness. However, despite the coinage of ubuntu, discrimination and violence against African migrants increasingly continue in the new South Africa. New discriminatory practices have emerged against African migrants that is threatening togetherness in South Africa. In the context of the precedent point of view, the aim of this paper is to provide answer to the following questions; (a) What are the discriminatory practices against African migrants that threatens togetherness in South Africa? (b) How effective is ubuntu in fostering togetherness in South Africa? (c) Why are African migrant victims of togetherness in the new South Africa? Answers to these questions is obtained through extensive literature review of secondary data that comprise of journal articles, government publications, websites, books and other relevant sources. The findings reveal physical and verbal discriminatory practices against African migrants that threatens togetherness in South Africa. It discovers that ubuntu is less effective in fostering togetherness in the face of rising poverty, inequality and unemployment in South Africa. And that African migrants are victims of togetherness in the new South Africa as a result of disillusionment among locals.

Africans and Europeans have been in contact for centuries under different contexts, including trade, Atlantic slavery, and colonization. However, colonization is the most epochal of African contacts because of how it changed African political, economic and social structures, instituting a framework of life that conflicted with African precolonial values. This conflict manifests in debates about what constitutes development in Africa, as shown in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Decolonizing the Mind (1986). According to Ngugi, while some scholars feel that African cultural values are the core of African development, others argue that European modernity is the foundation of African development. However, the two perspectives are flawed because they rely on binary relationships that place categories on hierarchical levels of importance. Chinua Achebe questions such hierarchies in his writings, particularly his "The Dead Men's Path" which presents a complex/interconnected model of development in Africa. I, therefore, argue that development in Africa cannot be simplified into a choice between African tradition and European modernity because development models rooted in hierarchical frameworks cannot address Africa's complex/evolving reality. I advocate, instead, for a pluriversal framework of African development as represented in Achebe's "Dead Men's Path" which acknowledges the diverse influences/preconditions of development in Africa. Drawing upon Erik Olin Wright's Real Utopias, my analysis envisions a self-determined African future which complicates any desire to return to the romanticized African past or an idealized Westernized future. My paper will be guided by the following set of critical questions: is African tradition an impediment or resource to African development? What enablers of development are suggested in Achebe's "Dead Men's Path"? The paper concludes with Wright's perspective that since African development problems are rooted in African structures/institutions, African thinkers can also re-imagine developments from alternative models. Achebe's "Dead Men's Path" offers a lens to imagine alternative and potential transformative possibilities.

This roundtable explores the transnational dynamics of political activism through the lens of the 2024 Bangladesh student protests and their resonance within Toronto's Bangladeshi-Canadian diaspora. Employing cosmopolitan citizenship frameworks, we examine how transnational social movements transcend national boundaries, reconfiguring collective memory, political consciousness, and intergenerational relationships. Our interdisciplinary analysis reveals how digital platforms and networked activism enable second-generation youth to challenge traditional familial structures while simultaneously reconnecting with historical struggles for liberation.

The research interrogates the transformative potential of cosmopolitan citizenship, demonstrating how local community experiences are deeply intertwined with global political movements. We analyze the gendered dimensions of transnational activism, investigating how digital mobilization reshapes mental health narratives, political engagement, and diasporic identity. By centering the intersections of trauma, resistance, and collective healing, our panel illuminates how transnational social movements create new forms of solidarity that extend beyond geographic and generational boundaries.

Our theoretical approach bridges diaspora studies, critical trauma theory, and cosmopolitan citizenship to provide nuanced insights into how political movements generate collective resilience. The panel contributes critical perspectives for policymakers, mental health practitioners, and scholars examining the complex relationships between global activism, community well-being, and transnational belonging.

Background: Indigenous Knowledge Systems of rural Campesino communities in the Peruvian Andes are critical for ongoing maintenance and conservation of local food systems, supporting communities’ food and nutrition security while stewarding native potato genetic diversity. These knowledge systems face multi-level, compounding threats of erosion and remain misunderstood and misrepresented in research. To respond to and address these threats, these Indigenous Knowledge Systems must be understood not as static, but as dynamic processes of production and reproduction.

Methods: Original research was conducted with two Campesino communities in the Peruvian highlands, Huancachi and Quilcas, both recognized for continued use of the ancestral system of ‘turno’ cultivation, a communal land management strategy and system of sectoral fallowing, and their stewardship of native potato biodiversity. Data was collected using mixed-method Participatory Action Research. This study uses systems thinking to examine, map and understand dimensions of local knowledge systems in both communities and how they underpin Turno cultivation, examining the relationship between knowledge systems and native potato conservation.

Results & Conclusion: Results from this study suggest the integral role that land, culture and worldview play in sustaining and reproducing Indigenous Knowledge for Turno cultivation, as well as the role of external actors in shaping relationships between systems elements. This study found that as access and ownership over land is threatened, the power and influence of external actors over these local knowledge systems is increased, which in turn shapes relationships and functions of the knowledge system.

Based on extensive literature review, and semi-structured interviews and focus-group discussions with informal waste collectors in Maputo, Mozambique, this paper explains the importance of informal workers in the plastics recycling value chain, and identifies challenges that they typically face. It then discusses the use of digitally-enabled services in the plastics recycling sector, focusing on whether such services can help waste pickers address these challenges. As many governments and international agencies promote formalization of the waste picking sub-sector, the article differentiates between formalization and inclusion, and examines the role of digitally-enabled services in more equitable inclusion of informal waste pickers in the recycling value chain. The example of Mozambique demonstrates that digitally-enabled systems in the recycling sector can provide useful services to informal waste pickers even in countries where phone ownership is not widespread and where ICT infrastructure is limited.

Policymakers herald the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) as a “triple-win” for development: addressing underemployment in the Caribbean and Mexico, facilitating Global North-to-South cash flows and skills transfer, and supplying labour for Canadian agriculture. However, scholars demonstrate that SAWP reproduces systemic inequalities by fostering exploitative labour conditions and neocolonial power dynamics. The literature primarily focuses on the first two “wins,” yet the third—SAWP’s purported benefits to Canadian agriculture—remains underexplored. This research uses a policy lens to examine how legitimating narratives shape Canadians’ perceptions of farm labour in Canada. Through post-structural policy analysis, the study deconstructs how framing labour shortages as a simple supply-demand issue obscures systemic barriers to meaningful agricultural livelihoods, including low wages, substandard working conditions and family separation. Initial qualitative research findings from 16 semi-structured interviews reveal that certain narratives likely uphold the use of precarious migrant labour and even facilitate deskilling in the domestic labour force and global devaluation of farming careers. By interrogating these narratives, this project argues that discourses have implications for the policy interventions that affect labour practices and sectoral sustainability. It fills a critical analysis gap on SAWP’s purported benefits and urges a reexamination of Canadian labour policies to prioritize worker rights and long-term agricultural development, domestically and in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although currently a work in progress, the paper is projected to be completed in April 2025.

The structure of property rights has implications for both the creation and consolidation of democracy. The focus of this paper is on the influence of land tenure systems on the propensity of democracies to consolidate. In particular it maintains that in the case of Ethiopia, community or associative land tenure system enhances democratic consolidation and reduces the risk of reversal to dictatorship. The theoretical explanation for community ownership of land in stabilizing democracy will be elaborated on by a case study of a traditional democratic system in Ethiopia. Specifically, the paper will show how the economic institutions of the indigenous democratic system of the Oromo people of Ethiopia, known as Gada, helped consolidate democracy among sections of the Oromo over long periods of time.

Studies show a positive relationship between women's empowerment and dietary diversity. However, this relationship is not as straightforward as it seems, due to changing dietary patterns resulting from rapid urbanization, prevalent socio-cultural norms, and structural barriers that limit women's agency. Further, the concept of empowerment itself is complex and multi-dimensional, making it challenging to measure women’s empowerment. Progress is being made in measuring women's empowerment through the women's empowerment in agriculture index (WEAI) and its variants, including the project level WEAI (pro-WEAI). There is scanty scholarship on pro-WEAI indicators and MDD-W especially around urban and peri-urban areas. This study examines the relationship between women's empowerment and the variety of foods consumed by women of reproductive age in West Bengal, India, and identifies factors that influence MDD-W. We collected primary data from 542 women aged 18-49 during March-April 2024 from two communities in the North and South 24 Parganas of West Bengal and used standard method to analyze pro-WEAI and MDD-W indicators. Descriptive results showed geographic disparities in economic, education, and social dimensions, highlighting the importance of contextual understanding. The analysis of ten food group consumption revealed similarities between the communities, with scheduled caste women consuming slightly more vitamin A-rich foods. Both scheduled caste and scheduled tribe communities, however, face challenges in achieving minimum dietary requirements. We observed consistent dietary diversity against the pro-WEAI score. However, once it reaches a certain level, the MDD-W increases, indicating that women of reproductive age from such marginalized communities need to be empowered up to a certain threshold for the recommended dietary outcome. This study contributes to help develop tailored interventions to empower women, with the goal of enhancing nutritional outcomes for women of reproductive age, especially in resource-limited marginalized communities.

Objectives: India, known for having one of the world's most extensive and varied education systems, experienced a hasty expansion in its private education sphere. This growth has been particularly notable in low-fee private schools (LFPS), which currently have thirty percent enrollment. There is a transparent barrier to looking at having qualified and trained teachers in these schools (Vaidya & Hilali, 2021; Chattopadhay & Roy, 2017). Little attention has been given to the working conditions and hiring processes at these schools (Afridi, 2017; UNESCO, 2022). According to UNESCO report (2019), private education providers are becoming significant employers of teachers globally. However, there is very little on teachers' work conditions in low-fee private schools, how these schools maintain systemic inequalities (Chudgar & Sakamoto, 2021), and how this discrimination affects teachers' overall job satisfaction, career, and motivation. How LFP schools hire teachers without a contract and keep off track of the tracing of how they carry out the recruitment policies with teachers.

Conceptual framework: I draw upon Cultural Capital Theory, a framework on teachers' working conditions and Shadow Institutional, offering distinct lenses to examine the complex interplay of factors shaping teachers' experiences.

Research design: I will use a qualitative case study approach. This approach intends to deeply understand individuals' lived experiences and how they interpret phenomena (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This approach can help uncover teachers' subjective perspectives in low-fee private schools (LFPSs) and elite schools, shedding light on their drives, challenges, hiring process and aspirations.

Data sources: This will be gathered through school observations, document analysis, and interviews with teachers and principals.

Results and/or conclusions: The anticipated outcomes of my research will provide a comprehensive understanding of the differences between low-fee private schools and elite schools regarding teacher working conditions, teaching contracts, and recruitment practices.

In India, there has been a recent change in the way corporations and philanthropic organizations support education in India. They developed a growing interest in adopting outcome-based funding instead of traditional input-based funding, and partnering with the State. We present three cases where corporations and philanthropies partner with private actors to support the Government in achieving SDG 4. In these cases, funding was channelized through innovative financing instruments:

The first-ever Development Impact Bond (DIB) project in India to leverage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding for outcomes payment, exclusively focusing on early literacy was the Haryana Early Literacy Development Impact Bond. It uses a unique structure, unlike the traditional DIB structure, and has utilised domestic sources of funding, primarily CSR funds, rather than foreign philanthropic donor funds.

Next, India’s first Skill Impact Bond also has CSR partners as the outcome funders, and a coalition of philanthropic organisations working on a shared vision of the Government of India to make the youth “employment ready” as envisaged in National Education Policy 2020 and Viksit Bharat@2047 goals.

Another impact bond called LiftEd had partnered with CSR funders to improve in-school learning outcomes and initiate a systemic change in the education sector, supporting the Government of India to strengthen Foundational Literacy and Numeracy driven by the NIPUN Bharat Mission.

The shift in the mechanisms of innovative funding not only has implications for the efficiency and effectiveness of the programs, but also for the relationship between State , Corporations, and Civil Society Organizations.Against this backdrop, this paper maps the current pattern of collaboration of private and public entities to support SDG 4 : Quality Education in India mostly through Outcome-based funding.

This roundtable will be a dialogue between researchers working on the “agrarian question” in Latin America and South Asia. The “agrarian question,” conceptualized as an empirical question regarding the future of peasant agriculture in the face of a capitalist political economy and the implications of this for social and political change, has both empirical and polemical dimensions. In the contemporary context, those advocating in political or normative terms for small-scale or peasant agriculture, referred to historically as “populists,” draw to varying degrees on the ideas of the most important theorist of peasant agriculture, Russian agricultural economist Alexander Chayanov, whose ideas are transposed with the contribution of Marxists like Karl Kautsky and Vladimir Lenin. With the decline of centrally planned economies, the continuity of smallholder production in the face of globalized capitalism, and the rise of food sovereignty discourse and La Via Campesina at the global level, smallholder or peasant farming has been embraced by sections of the political Right and Left in different regions. While agrarian populism has arguably proven more resilient and politically multi-variant than the political prescriptions of Marxists, the political economy analysis of Marxists continues to have considerable explanatory power. Though peasant and family farming has adapted and, in some cases, thrived in capitalist market economies, the contributions of Marxism better explain the consolidation of agriculture in regions like North America as well as different regions within countries or the production of particular communities. This roundtable is a first step towards future collaboration on comparative research on processes of agrarian change in both regions. The contributors will consider the different responses of national governments in managing processes of agrarian change and how these explain differences across different cases.

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded annually since 1969, is not merely an accolade for academic excellence but a potent tool for policy brokerage. By recognizing and amplifying groundbreaking economic theories and empirical research, the prize serves as a bridge between academia and policymakers, influencing global economic governance. From institutional economics (Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson) and behavioral insights (Thaler) to market design (Roth, Shapley) and climate economics (Nordhaus), laureates have provided actionable frameworks addressing pressing societal challenges. These awards elevate niche economic paradigms into global consciousness, shaping policy agendas on issues like poverty alleviation (Banerjee, Duflo, Kremer), labor markets (Card, Goldin), and financial stability (Bernanke, Diamond, Dybvig). Furthermore, the prize catalyzes interdisciplinary discourse, as seen in Elinor Ostrom’s pioneering work on governance of commons. Through strategic dissemination of ideas, the Nobel Committee not only validates intellectual contributions but also directs their application toward real-world solutions, underscoring the prize's role as a key intermediary in policy formation. This analysis situates the Nobel Prize in Economics as a mechanism for translating theoretical innovations into pragmatic tools for socioeconomic development, reinforcing its stature as a cornerstone in the architecture of policy brokerage.

Conventional economic models are under scrutiny for driving environmental overshoot while undermining the economy’s social foundations. Diminishing confidence in national and global institutions to deliver change has led to calls for economic decision-making to better reflect the knowledge and experience of citizens and give them greater influence over their own economic well-being. There are different arenas through which citizen engagement in economic governance can take place. One is through protest and resistance, which has been effective at blocking undesirable outcomes and envisioning alternative futures, but is less adequate for problem solving and solution generation. A second is through inviting citizen participation in deliberative decision-making, such as through deliberative trade policy fora, although the effectiveness of such arrangements is debated. One key critique is that they marginalise dissent and gloss over power asymmetries. A third arena is created bottom up, including through community development banks, worker- or community-owned enterprises or local trading schemes, where citizens engage in local economic governance on their own terms, and from this foundation seek influence in decision-making arenas controlled by others. This paper uses process tracing to analyse two such cases of grassroots efforts towards more democratic and deliberative economic governance. The findings identify elements of deliberative-participatory arrangements that are able to counter power asymmetries, even as some outcomes remain constrained by systemic factors. Within these arrangements, efforts to foster collective action and reshape relationships with the material world were foundational. This human-material interaction, which appears to be central in these cases of economic governance, does not emerge in the same way in studies of deliberative democracy in the civic or political sphere. 

La pauvreté, l’un des problèmes cruciaux du monde contemporain, est au cœur des préoccupations des États et des acteurs du développement. Le financement sociale et solidaire est considéré comme une mesure stratégique de lutte contre la pauvreté multidimensionnelle. Afin de mieux comprendre comment le financement sociale et solidaire peut contribuer à une amélioration du bien-être des pauvres, nous avons évalué l’impact du microcrédit sur la pauvreté multidimensionnelle au Burkina Faso sur la période 2021-2022. L’objectif principal de cette étude est de mieux comprendre la relation entre le microcrédit et la satisfaction des besoins humains tels que la santé, l’éducation, le cadre de vie et de revenu en mettant l’accent sur l’impact rôle social et particulièrement sa capacité à renforcer les liens de solidarité et d’entraide au sein des communautés.

Cette étude utilise des données de l'enquête harmonisée sur les conditions de vie des ménages réalisée par l’institut national de la statistique et de la démographie du Burkina Faso courant l’année 2021-2022. Nous avons identifié tous les bénéficiaires de microcrédit pour constituer notre base de données et ils sont au nombre de 82. La pauvreté étant perçue comme un phénomène multidimensionnel, nous avons construit un indicateur de pauvreté multidimensionnelle qui regroupe les dimensions de bien-être comme l’éducation, la santé, la condition de vie et le revenu en utilisant l’analyse factorielle de données mixte. Enfin, nous utilisons la régression logistique multinomiale ordonnée pour apprécier l’impact du microcrédit sur la pauvreté multidimensionnelle des bénéficiaires.

Les principales conclusions montrent que, le microcrédit par son rôle social permet à certaines personnes pauvres exclues du système financier traditionnel de réduire leur pauvreté multidimensionnelle. En effet, le microcrédit permet d’avoir un revenu, d'améliorer la nutrition, d’améliorer leur état de santé, et d’envoyer leurs enfants à l’école.

Africa has been the focal point of development strategies for decades, however, it has not experienced the same growth as other regions those strategies have been pulled from.

The ideal development strategy for African countries is removing the idea of a blanket strategy and collaborating with African countries to establish strong institutions that enable them to adapt existing developing strategies to their local contexts. This is because precedence from examining the development strategies of other regions have shown that the most effective development policies are adapted to fit the local context of the country the will be implemented in. This postulation, backed by the global implications of Ikenberry's three world system (that suggests a new international order with the global East and global South being essential), implies that the future of development of the African continent hinges on the international community accepting and enabling the agency of African countries to decide the steps they need to take in order to develop.

This roundtable addresses the following conference question: What have we learned from earlier examples of solidarity to help us forge a different and better future? It focuses on case studies of DAWN's new edited volume “Pandemic Policies and Resistance Southern Feminist Critiques in Times of Covid-19” (Bloomsbury, July 2025) that center social organizing, migrants communities of care, informal workers, people living in poverty, domestic workers and other subaltern folks. Social movements played a key role in responding to the global crisis, especially in addressing the harms caused by inadequate government policies that left many vulnerable. These movements focused on supporting marginalized groups and developing alternative forms of collective organizing. The intersection of collective care and political mobilization is central to the struggles discussed, offering a transformative political agenda in a world of increasing authoritarianism and austerity. These movements challenge exclusions based on labor, location, and citizenship, promoting social and political rights for migrants and recognizing the value of care and unpaid work. Their actions include labor organizing, solidarity between movements, and engagement with the state.