DSA supports a number of study groups where researchers, teachers, students and people working in development come together from across disciplines to work on specific themes and questions relevant to development studies.

At DSA2024, the following study groups are convening panels. Find out more about the conference and register here.

Data justice and development

Data are playing an increasingly important role in shaping development. Our panel will explore issues of data justice in development, including cases where data have led to social (in)justice, and practical strategies by which data can contribute to socially just development.

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Gender justice in troubled times.

We are proposing to form three panels under this broad theme, on behalf of the Women and Development study group. The three panels are on: Gender justice and environmental crises; Gender justice in times of violence and conflict; Gender justice, work, re/production, and exploitation. For these panels, we conceptualise gender justice as attempts to recognize, visibilise, challenge, and dismantle the structures and practices that perpetuate gender-based inequalities.

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‘Intangible’ aspects of local faith actors’ contributions to building community resilience, peace and reconciliation: Insights from participatory action research in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The roundtable provides a platform for the speakers and the audience to reflect in an interactive process on the ‘tangible’ (or ‘material’) and ‘intangible’ (or ‘spiritual’) aspects of the contribution of local faith actors to building resilience, peace and reconciliation at the local level.

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European Association of Research and Training Development Institutes (EADI) 50th-anniversary roundtable on ‘the future of development studies’

The roundtable will debate the future of development studies. Specifically the framing of development studies around set of fundamental questions. The roundtable is organised as part of the 50th anniversary of the European Association of Research and Training Development Institutes (EADI). The panel debate a set of questions informed by a workshop held on the day prior to the DSA conference, specifically:
(i) Should development be framed as the socio-economic transformation of societies or simply a better status quo in some way? In other words, how aspirational should the definition of development be?
(ii) Is development universal to all countries or are the countries of the global North and South somehow fundamentally different in characteristics? In other words, what is the scope of development studies?
(iii) Is the primary mechanism of oppression of the global South epistemic or material political economy? And what should be done?

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Interrogating localisation from social justice perspectives

This panel aims to provide a platform for critical discussion and reflection on the localisation agenda for those working in/with NGOs and CSOs. It aims to advance understandings of localisation grounded in social justice and decolonisation.

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Rural labour and agrarian politics in the South.

In attracting contributions on the issues and themes below the panel overall will contribute to the conference’s thematic strands of ‘redistribution and restoration’ and/or ‘production and reproduction’ by centring the ‘rural’ South.

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