Our Aims and Objectives
We are the UK association for all those who research, study and teach global development issues
Find Out MoreThe Call for Panels is now open!
We will endeavour to communicate the results of the Scientific Committee review by the 13 December 2024. Once we have the list of accepted panels we will open the Call for Papers on 18 December 2024. Call for Papers will be published on the website and advertised via email and DSA social media channels.
#DSA2025 conference will be a hybrid event, organised and hosted by the Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath with the support of NomadIT. DSA2025 invites proposals for panels and discussion fora that engage critically with this year’s theme Navigating crisis: dangers and opportunities in development. The conference is also open to submissions outside the conference theme of relevance to current development theory and practice, or topics covered by DSA Study Groups, even if these are not strongly aligned to the conference theme.
Different session formats for DSA2025 are encouraged, including debates, roundtables, ‘speed-meetings’, fire-site meetings and other innovative formats. Panels that attempt to combine academic and practitioner work would be very welcome. The session formats will include:
Paper panels: These sessions will involve one or more sessions that are based around 3-4 papers, perhaps with a discussant. To promote the highest levels of intellectual exchange, we are looking for convenors who can commit to liaising closely with paper-givers in advance of the conference, with a view to securing high-quality papers. This may involve the submission of papers in advance, perhaps incentivised by a post-conference publication plan by panel convenors.
Roundtable panels: These sessions can adopt various formats to achieve the purpose of fostering a high-quality exchange of ideas around the theme of Social justice and development in a polarising world.
Experimental approaches to panels: These might fall outside regular academic paper panels or roundtables. Some possible formats or ideas might be debates, speed-meeting, workshops, asynchronous panels, fire-site etc. It may be possible to go beyond the 90 minute session format if required. The format should be described within the long abstract of the proposal.
Submissions from all social science disciplines are welcome. The past few years have seen exciting debates on the identity of development studies as an interdisciplinary field, as well as calls to decolonise both development and economics. Building on these conversations, this year the conference is keen to engage development economists oriented to heterodoxy in thought and interested in wider interdisciplinary discussions
Decisions over panel proposals will be made by the Scientific Committee and communicated to all proposing convenors by 13 December in time for the opening of the call for papers on 18 December.
The conference is going to be hybrid and therefore it is crucial to make sure that panel convenors have a stable and fast enough internet access if they will choose to attend virtually.
If your internet connection tends to be unstable and you have been unable to share screen via Zoom (or other types of video calls), please make sure you find a co-convenor who can travel for the face to face event in Bath. This way, if the worst happens and the primary convenor is unable to lead the panel, the co-convenor can take over.
If you do not have previous experience and wish to make sure that your computer and internet connection are enough, please let us know ahead of time, so we can arrange a tech test during the preparation period.