October 2025 – Debating Development Research

28/10/2025

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.

21/10/202521/10/2025

The Gradual Change of Multilateralism and Development Cooperation

By Lars Engberg-Pedersen

In a recent piece on this blog, Stephan Klingebiel and Andy Sumner take up the important question of how the present situation of international cooperation and global development should be described. Clearly, they should be thanked for addressing the question, which has become increasingly urgent the last year. In this piece, I will discuss some of their arguments as an input into the discussion of contemporary changes.

14/10/2025

Transforming the International Development Cooperation System – Mission Impossible?

Interview with Aram Ziai, Chair of Development and Postcolonial Studies, University of Kassel, Germany.

Professor Aram Ziai is an academic who has been writing on Post-Development for over 20 years. His work is all centred around decolonising the sector – and on how colonial injustices are still effective in our day-to-day life. He is also Executive Director of the Global Partnersh i p Network, which has been explicitly set up to try to decolonise international cooperation and knowledge production as far as the structures of the ‘development industry’ will allow.