Credit: Alesia Ofori

Development issues facing our world today assume multiple dimensionalities: physical, geographical, political, socio-economic, and historical and scales: from human bodies, micro-level, international scale and covering the Anthropocene. This has called for the adaptation of both research and practice to cope with the ongoing dynamic within the sector.

Researchers in Development Network (RiDNet) is convening its annual conference around the theme of ‘Development Today’. With this conference theme, we hope to convene a diverse group of both academics (from Sciences to Humanities) and practitioners (across the globe) to discuss ongoing development issues and to identify interdisciplinary approaches that are needed to tackle them. Theoretically, the conference also seeks to critically engage with the idea of development in the past and development in the future. What was the ‘face’ of development in the past? How do we see it changing in the future? And how has the Covid-19 Pandemic reoriented traditional methods and relationships in development research? What new challenges have emerged in changing political and economic contexts?

Development is, too, an inherently interdisciplinary field; it can be framed or approached by various disciplines and ways of thinking at any one time, which is the basis for the field’s distinction and dynamism. To be a development researcher is to both practice interdisciplinarity and navigate interdisciplinary spaces. This conference welcomes presentations that exemplify how interdisciplinarity broadens development practice and thinking.

Are you looking to engage and explore interdisciplinary thinking in your field of study? Then this is an opportunity to submit a panel or presentation proposal to be featured in the Centre for Global Development Annual Conference to be held in June 2021. We are inviting proposals from everyone (PGRs, Post-docs, lecturers etc)  across the University to propose themes for the conference and possibly willing to assist in convening and facilitating discussions on their proposed theme. The conference will be virtual & held over one week, adopting a combination of break-out rooms and keynote lectures from both academics and practitioners on topics ranging from career to research.

Proposals can be sent to cgd@leeds.ac.uk with the Subject line ‘CGD Development Today Conference 2021”. The deadline for proposal submissions is the 9th of April 2021. Please feel free to direct any questions or clarification to cgd@leeds.ac.uk.