Call for papers: Working Theory. Politics of Development in the Twenty-First Century

Dissertation workshop.

The Working Theory dissertation workshop invites doctoral students who have conducted their archival and/or fieldwork and are currently writing their thesis. The focus of the workshop will especially be on theory building from the ground up. This means attending to the dialectical engagement between the empirical and the abstract, the visible and the invisible, and the spectacular and the everyday to make sense of the social worlds.  The theme this year is ‘Politics of Development in the Twenty-First Century’ where we aim to unpack how ideas and practices of development continue to be reshaped in the present. The older paradigms of development and modernisation, together with frameworks of international development aid, have been the subject of intensive scholarly attention. We turn our attention to the newer evolving forms. We do not define specific fields, as such, but invite the applicants to revisit a basic question: what does development or ideas of progress mean in the twenty-first century? The idea is to unpack how development policies are conceived and deployed, and the kinds of identities and inequities which shape this emerging landscape. Consider, for example, forms of social welfare and green transition, and especially forms of public/private partnerships in a range of domains. The invited submissions are not limited to any specific region or scale. The workshop welcomes applications from across the disciplines of area studies, political science, anthropology, sociology, geography, and development studies.   

The workshop is small and limited to 8-10 participants to ensure that each project gets full attention. It includes keynote lectures by invited experts. The accepted dissertations will receive feedback from faculty members as well as from peers.

Any questions related to the workshop should be addressed to Professor Ravinder Kaur

The workshop is a part of the “Green Futures: Strategic Partnerships in the Anthropocene”, funded by the Danish Council of Independent Research (DFF) and the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen.