Our Aims and Objectives
We are the UK association for all those who research, study and teach global development issues
Find Out MoreSOAS University of London, 26–28 June 2024
#DSA2024 conference took place as a hybrid conference and was organised and hosted by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. The Conference convenor was Michael Jennings, Professor of Global Development, Dept. of Development Studies.
Format: Hybrid – For the first time since 2012, DSA members were together face-to-face in London, however the conference also used online technologies to ensure participation from those who prefer to engage remotely. There was a range of panel formats including paper, roundtable, asynchronous and experimental panels, such as debates, speed meetings and more.
Accessing the conference
As a hybrid conference, all the sessions were recorded and later uploaded to the conference website. More details to follow.
Funding
DSA2024 offered partial funding for our delegates to cover their travel and accommodation expenses. The resources for funding were limited and not all applications got a positive response. Funding was provided by JDS, DSA and SOAS with 44 delegates out of 416 applications being funded. DSA is committed to ensuring participation of our colleagues from the global South and in light of this 36 of the funded delegates are from the global South.
Underpinning all global development discourses, practice and policy – sometimes explicitly, often implicitly – is the issue of social justice. Whether framed within formal discourses of human rights, representation or redistribution; an intended or unintended outcome of development policy and interventions; or a contested idea around which debates on equality, equity, fairness and responsibility are framed and debated, social justice is at the heart of global development. Orthodox development priorities and institutions, too, acknowledge explicitly (if perhaps problematically) social justice as a core feature of global development priorities and interventions.
Over recent years, an increasingly fracturing world has faced challenges from a succession of crises (economic, climate, health, conflict), growing global and domestic inequities, and challenges to rights and representation amidst a growing populist politics of exclusion. The growing polarisation of global and national politics; debates around rights, reparations and legacy responsibilities; around identities and identity politics, has fed into debates and policy in global development and social justice, contributing to the further marginalisation of already vulnerable populations and communities.
The DSA2024 conference provides an opportunity to reflect on issues, structures and processes of power, justice and equity within global development action and relationships; on the need for de-centring development theory within the discipline; and the ways in which these challenge existing ideas, and demand new ways of thinking about, perhaps even re-setting, thinking and practice around social justice and development.
The DSA2024 conference explored what thinking more explicitly about global development from a social justice perspective can offer development theory and practice, with a particular focus on the three core strands:
Find out more about the conference theme
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