Development Politics Showcase

Meet the team

The Development Politics Specialist Group has a new committee.

Indrajit Roy, University of York - The global politics of hope, Reimagining citizenship, migration and development, and comparative and international politics of development. 

Portia Roelofs, University of Oxford - Politics of public sector reform, parties and ideology, elite social networks, donor-recipient relations and grassroots politics

Yue Zhou Lin, King's College London - Rhetorical dialogue between Marxism and “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, China’s healthcare reform (including the Sanming healthcare model), expansion of higher education in China, and international relations through a Neo-Gramscian lens

The SG would like to express its gratitude to past members- Dr. Andrew Wyatt, Dr. Sarah Jane Cooper-Knock and Dr. Geoff Chung, for their work over the last several years. 

What are the aims of your Specialist Group?

The Development Politics Specialist Group aims to be a research network for researchers and teachers of development politics in the UK. Our work concentrates on the politics of development. We understand politics broadly as 'exercise and use of social power'. We conceptualise as the 'immanent processes and intentional projects of social and economic change'. Our members consider development across a wide array of sectors, including- but not limited to- financial instruments of economic growth, infrastructure, investments in health and education, rural and urban development, welfare and employment, wealth-creation, poverty and inequality, and changing ideas of human personhood, dignified lives and possibilities for the future. We are committed to furthering ongoing calls for decolonising and diversifying research, teaching and academic citizenship in academia.

Although a large number of our members focus their research on 'developing' regions in southern Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, rapid changes in the global political economy have compelled our members to consider the afore-mentioned questions in the context of 'developed' countries as well. Profound changes such as the emergence of the BRICS, growing inequalities within countries rather than between them, and sustained interrogations of liberalism in the industrialised capitalist democracies of the North Atlantic have made this an exciting time to study, teach and research development politics.

Membership is not restricted to the UK, but includes scholars from across the world. 

What activities do you undertake as a group?

The SG hosts a number of activities aimed at rethinking the politics of development in the light of the profound global changes to which we are witness. In 2017, we organized the first Liberating Comparisons Workshop to bring together scholars from across the UK to explore the potential of comparative methods. Our workshop critically explored how we do comparative work: How are international collaborations for comparative projects assembled and run? How are cases for comparison selected? What is compared and why? What do we do with the results of our analysis? What frustrations do we encounter en route? Our hope was not to reify narrow answers to these questions but to open up space so that they could be discussed openly and honestly together.

Through 2019, we organised two workshops on The politics of Chinese investments in Europe, supported by the PSA’s Pushing the Boundaries Fund.  Doctoral students, early career researchers and established scholars reflected on the implications of China’s European investments on the Liberal International Order. The growing Chinese interest in Europe upends the widespread assumptions in the social sciences that ideas and investments diffuse from the Global North to the Global South.

As 2020 draws to a close, we are running a competition to support the translation of their research from English to other languages to make these available to wider audiences beyond the Anglophone world. Over 2021, we hope to continue supporting translations of social science research from and into English as a means of  supporting the multi-directional flow of ideas within and beyond English-speaking audiences.

We plan to convene a series of informal seminars to support early career academics present their works-in-progress on the politics of development so do get in touch if you would like to present.

How can new members get involved or find out more?

You can find more information about us here: www.psa.ac.uk/specialist-groups/development-politics

Please get in touch with Dr. Yue Zhou Lin if you would like to join us. We are developing a facebook page and hope to join Twitter soon, so watch this space.

We look forward to work together with colleagues from other Specialist Groups so please feel free to get in touch to join forces. We are really keen to contribute to ongoing efforts at decolonising and diversifying the social sciences and welcome any thoughts or suggestions you might have.