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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The Disciplinary Roots of Disagreement in Development Studies: Findings from a Global Survey of Scholars

By Ryan Briggs and Andy Sumner

Development Studies is institutionally well established. The QS rankings identify over 150 universities with postgraduate Development Studies programmes across approximately 40 countries. Journals, institutes and scholarly associations have proliferated since the 1960s.

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Building a National Platform for Development and Sustainability – The Czech Experience

By Ondřej Horký-Hlucháň and Tereza Němečková

We have both worked in development research for more than two decades. And yet, again and again we were amazed by stumbling upon great publications and scholars we didn’t know about. They may have worked in a neighbouring faculty in Prague or a smaller regional university. So, as simple as it may sound, this observation became the main motivation behind the creation of a national platform that would become the Czech Research Network for Global Development and Sustainability (CRENDES): to get to know each other. Fast forward, CRENDES celebrated its second anniversary in January 2026, and it is worth reflecting on how the network has grown and what challenges lie ahead.

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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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