Development Studies – Debating Development Research

25/11/202502/12/2025

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.

28/10/202502/12/2025

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.

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.

22/07/202502/12/2025

Universalisms and their Discontents

By Brendan M. Howe

The contemporary inter-paradigm debate in Development Studies can be characterised as between advocates of a ‘universal’ global development experience (both positive and negative), and those advocating the centrality of discriminatory practices experienced by the Global South as obstacles to development. Aspirations for universality have faced the challenges and charges of neocolonialism, racism, cultural relativism, exceptionalism, Eurocentricism, and exclusion.

04/06/202502/12/2025

Is Postdevelopment a Theory of Development? Situating Postdevelopment in Social Theory

By Aram Ziai

Four decades after its beginnings, postdevelopment (PD) has become an established approach in development theory. Its core claim that we should ‘reject the entire paradigm of development’ and look for alternatives, has become well-known. However, is postdevelopment still part of development theory or is it something else? This post, based on a longer, more nuanced article in the EJDR tries to address this question.