https://www.ids.ac.uk/news/ids-researchers-at-dsa-2026/
IDS researchers and PhD candidates are out in force presenting at this year’s Development Studies Association (DSA) conference – the biggest of its kind in Europe – and which takes place in Dublin from the 8 to 10 July. The theme of the conference this year is Reimagining Development: Power, Agency, and Futures in an Uncertain World.
In a time of deepening global uncertainty – from climate crisis to digital disruption – development is being redefined. This theme invites critical reflections on how shifting power relations and emerging forms of agency are reshaping the field.
What does it mean to reimagine development in light of contested futures, decolonial struggles, and systemic challenges? The conference this year will focus on:
- Decolonising development and redistributing power
- AI, digital technologies, and new forms of inequality
- Climate justice and transformative futures
- Geopolitical shifts and the future of aid
- Grassroots agency, solidarity, and alternative visions of progress
Panel sessions
Over thirty IDS researchers and PhD Students are presenting this year on a wide variety of panels and roundtables. They will be presenting cutting-edge research covering topics such as health, digital development, tax and much more.
Below is a full list of the sessions IDS researchers are convening or presenting:
- Panel: 08: Bad feelings in Development: Lessons in failure, loss, and despair featuring Ruhil Iyer, Tessa Lewin and Priya Raghavan, Samreen Mushtaq, Julia Bairstow and Zarak Rais X.
- Panel P10: Service delivery in crisis: Power, agency and contested futures featuring Kate Pruce.
- Panel P13: Rethinking urban governance in Africa: Navigating security, participation, and resilience to strengthen local agency featuring Tago Amiani.
- Panel 17: Power and agency in digital development: How digital citizenship and digital authoritarianism co-produce human development featuring Niranjan Nampoothiri, Caroline Khene and Mary Abounabhan
- Panel P26: Epistemic ruptures in climate governance: Reimagining justice, knowledge, and authority featuring Ru-Yu Lin.
- Panel P28: Feminist and decolonial visions of development featuring Maha Gaad
- Panel P29: Reimagining public health: Power, inequality, and empowerment in uncertain futures in the Global South featuring Catherine Grant.
- Panel P31: The role(s) of social capital in resilience in fragile and conflict-affected contexts featuring Hestin Kezia Octalina and Hestin Klaas.
- Panel P33: Shifting landscapes of welfare and mutuality: Reimagining local and transnational aid amid limited state support and declining international assistance featuring Vanessa van den Boogaard.
- Panel P36: Gender, collective action and climate justice Theme: Climate justice and transformative futures and grassroots agency, solidarity, and alternative visions of progress featuring Ira Deulgaonkar.
- Panel P66: Agency from the margins: Non-state actors as architects of futures featuring Maureen Mahingi.
- Panel P73: Resistance economies: Struggling against domination and pursuing alternatives to “development” within – and through – production, exchange and distribution featuring Patricia Ortega Fernandez
- Panel P75: Contested pathways: Pluralizing the just transition discourse featuring Aysha Valery and Paula Alejandra Camargo.
- Roundtable 2: Voices of the people: To what extent are the views and sense of agency of citizens in the UK and Ireland shaping the future of global development featuring Peter Taylor.
- Roundtable 10: Can development be a meaningful framework for justice and transformation in a rapidly changing world featuring Peter Taylor.
- Roundtable 11: Large-grant funded research centres and the political economy of research featuring Peter Taylor.
- Experimental workshop: Creativity, participation and collaborative co-production in methods and practices featuring Diana Ramirez Sarmiento.
See panel times and descriptions
DSA Thesis prize winners
Also, at the DSA we congratulate IDS Student Iris Ru-Yu Lin who is highly commended for her thesis: Solastalgia and Transfiguration: Emotional and Adaptive responses of the Monpa transhumant pastoralists to climate and environmental change in the Himalayan borderland of Western Arunachal Pradesh, India.
