This year’s DSA’s annual conference (#DSA2021) took place online, organised and hosted by the University of East Anglia. The conference focused on Unsettling Development, with the aim to explore how development studies can approach the multiple pressures that are reshaping how we think, study and effect progressive social change.

The conference week was vibrant, attracting 674 delegates from 69 different countries of which 29% were based in the Global South.

A broad range of development studies interest were covered during the week-long event. A particular highlight were two plenary sessions which focused on ‘Historical perspective on pandemics across disciplines’ and ‘Race and development: What’s so unsettling?‘, and were sponsored by the Journal of Development Studies and Oxford Development Studies respectively. The programme featured a further a 53 panels covering a range of topics, from: women’s organising and resistance; Covid-19 and its effects on business and global development, climate mobility and activism and justice in Malawi, to name but a few. In total, delegates presented 342 papers.

The conference also offered a range of networking opportunities, from virtual book clubs, to a conference social event: Denys Lasdun’s House of Games and a speed networking event, lead by DSA President Prof Sam Hickey, where delegates could interact and meet one another. The screening of Children of the Sea, a film by director Ayumu Watanabe, was another conference highlight.

You can browse the events and recorded panels via the conference programme page*.

#DSA2022 will be hosted by The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, at UCL (University College London). Visit the DSA website and follow our social media channels to stay up-to-date with the latest news about next year’s conference.

*Please note that in order to access the recorded panels you must be logged in to DSA website. Some event recordings can be viewed without the need to be logging in.