Our Aims and Objectives

We are the UK association for all those who research, study and teach global development issues

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What is Development Studies

What is development studies and decolonising development.

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Our Members

We have around 1,000 members, made up of individuals and around 40 institutions

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Governance

Find out about our constitution, how we are run and meet our Council

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People

Meet our Council members and other staff who support the running of DSA

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About

The DSA Conference is an annual event which brings together the development studies community

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DSA2025

Our conference this year is themed "Navigating crisis: dangers and opportunities in development"

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Past Conferences

Find out about our previous conferences

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Study Groups

Our Study Groups offer a chance to connect with others who share your areas of interest

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Students and ECRs

Students and early career researchers are an important part of our community

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Publications

Our book series with OUP and our relationship with other publishers

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Decolonising Development

The initiatives we are undertaking that work towards decolonising development studies

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Membership Directory

Find out who our members are, where they are based and the issues they work on

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Call for Papers

25–27 June 2025, Hybrid at University of Bath

Navigating crisis

dangers and opportunities in development

The DSA2025 call for papers is now OPEN

The call for papers for DSA2025 is now OPEN until 28 January 2025

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Rules

  • An individual cannot present more than one paper
  • It is permitted to be a non-presenting co-author on multiple papers
  • Every person can have each conference role once: you can be a convenor to one panel, be a discussant once, a chair once and a presenter once
  • We do not encourage you to propose several papers as it delays the conference timelines, as all multiples will have to be withdrawn.

Paper panels

Proposals to these panels must consist of:

  • a paper title
  • the name(s), email address(es) and organisational affiliations of author(s)
  • a short abstract of fewer than 300 characters
  • a long abstract of fewer than 250 words

On submission of the proposal, the authors will receive an automated email confirming receipt. If you do not receive this email, please first check the conference system (‘Login’ button, see toolbar above right) to see if your proposal is there. If it is, it simply means your confirmation email got spammed/lost; if it is not, you will need to re-submit, as for some reason the process was not completed.

Co-authors cannot be added/removed nor can papers be withdrawn by the proposers themselves – for that, please email [email protected].

Experimental panels

These might fall outside regular academic paper panels or roundtables and the format should be clear in the panel abstracts. Some possible formats or ideas might be debates, speed-meeting, workshops, asynchronous panels, fire-site etc. To submit a proposal for a contribution to an experimental panel, fill out the online proposal form with:

  • Title: a few words about the key message you would like to deliver)
  • Contribution: what you would like to bring to the panel. Please keep it to a few clear bullet points.
  • Mode of delivery: how would you wish to present your contribution? Please also get in touch with the convenor(s) to confirm your approach will work for their experimental panel.

Roundtables

Note some panels are called roundtables in the panels list. It is possible to submit a proposal for a contribution to a roundtable by filling out the online form with:

  • Title: a few words about the key message you would like to deliver
  • Contribution: what you would like to bring to the roundtable. Please keep it to a few clear bullet points
  • Why: why would you like to speak in the roundtable. Please read carefully the format of the roundtable in their abstracts before submitting a proposal.

Please be aware that a proposal is only needed if you want to be an official named speaker. Registered conference participants can attend any panel/roundtable and participate in discussions and Q&A sessions.

 

Useful information for later in this process

Convenors mark up papers proposed to their panel (28 Jan – 11 Feb 2025)

Proposals will be marked as ‘pending’ until the end of the Call for Papers (28 Jan 2025). Convenors will then be asked to make their decisions over the papers proposed to their panel by 11 Feb 2025 and to communicate those to the proposers, marking them up via ‘Login’ on the conference website.

Transfer process (11 Feb – 29 Feb 2025)

Papers which are neither accepted nor rejected, but marked for ‘transfer’, will be given the opportunity to be re-housed into other panels. The conference organisers will contact the authors of the proposals set to transfer and ask them to modify their abstracts to fit another panel of their choosing. We will advise them to target panels containing fewer than the allowed maximum (4 papers per session), which are thus able to include a few more.

The authors will then inform us of two panels they would like to apply to (in order of preference). We then forward the title, short and long abstracts to the convenors and ask them to consider the proposal. If the first panel rejects the proposal, we contact the second choice. Transfers which get rejected by both panels will then be set to ‘rejected’.

Editing your paper

Paper authors can use the login link in the top right of the DSA website to edit their proposals. Read more here.

Communication between authors/convenors

Convenor/author email addresses are not shown on the panel pages for anti-spam reasons. However there is an in-built secure email messaging system. If you cannot work that, please email conference(at)devstud.org.uk to obtain relevant email addresses. Read more here