What to Play Next: Development after the End of Development

By Heiner Janus and Michael Roll

Manchester embodies reinvention like few other places. It built the world’s first industrial economy, watched it rust, and recast itself as the capital of England’s north. When protests turned deadly at the Peterloo massacre, it helped galvanise a tradition of organised labour and democratic reform — one that later produced the suffragettes, founded there by Emmeline Pankhurst. And when the band Joy Division collapsed, the remaining members re-emerged as New Order. That instinct — not to reassemble what broke, but to build something new — was the animating spirit when the University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute convened researchers in mid-April to ask: is the era of Development over? And if so, what replaces it?

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Decolonising Development Studies: Why It Matters

By Devika Dutt

Calls to decolonise Development Studies have gained increasing visibility across universities, research institutes, and policy spaces. Yet despite its growing popularity, decolonisation is often treated as a loosely defined aspiration rather than a substantive intellectual and political project. In many cases, it is reduced to efforts to diversify reading lists or improve representation within existing frameworks. While such initiatives are important in their own right, they do not address the deeper structural and epistemic foundations of the field.

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Decolonial Journey: #RhodesMustFall and ‘Decolonising Development Studies’ in Ghana and Nigeria

By Luqman Muraina / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project

I completed my B.Sc. Sociology in Nigeria with little or no knowledge about alternative epistemologies, coloniality, and politics of knowledge. Like many young graduates fed by modernity’s shine, I was just determined to be successful and contribute positively to societal development and transformation.

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The Challenges of Decolonising Sustainability and the Environment in Development Studies

By Lyla Mehta

The colonial roots of sustainability 

Since the Brundtland Commission advanced the concept of sustainable development in 1987, a lively strand in Development Studies (DS) has engaged with the linkages between environment, sustainability and development. This remained fairly niche until the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) goals mainstreamed sustainable development.

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How Social Science Fiction Could Transform Development Research: Extending our Methodological Horizons

By Laura Camfield

In an era of increasing complexity and uncertainty, conventional methodological approaches to pressing development concerns such as extreme income inequality often fall short. In a new reflection paper, Andy Sumner and I propose a new approach, social science fiction (SSF), not merely as an opportunity to cultivate empathy, but also as a robust methodological tool for development research.

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