International development stands at a pivotal moment. As communities around the world confront climate change, conflict, inequality, and other interconnected challenges, long-held assumptions about how development is practiced, studied, and taught are being reexamined.
Sponsored by Clark University’s School of Climate, Environment, and Society (CES) and Department of Sustainability and Social Justice, this event brings together scholars and practitioners for an extended dialogue exploring the future of international development.
Following Laura Hammond’s keynote address, “Is Development Dead? Research, Teaching and Studying in an Age of Crisis,” participants will reflect on the future of international development and the role universities, communities, and practitioners can play in shaping what’s next.
The program for this event includes:
| 10 a.m.–10:15 a.m. | Welcome & Framing Cynthia Caron, Associate Professor and Department Chair, Sustainability and Social Justice, Clark University |
| 10:15 a.m.–11:00 a.m. | Keynote by Laura Hammond: “Is Development Dead? Research, Teaching and Studying in an Age of Crisis” |
| 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. | Panel Discussion: “Whose Knowledge, Whose Voice?” |
Keynote Speaker: Laura Hammond
Laura Hammond is Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Knowledge Exchange and Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She has been conducting research on food security, conflict, migration, and diasporas in and from the Horn of Africa since the early 1990s. She lived in Ethiopia from 1993-2000, conducting research and working for various aid agencies. She is Head of the London International Development Centre-Migration Leadership Team and Team Leader of the EU Trust Fund’s Research and Evidence Facility on migration and conflict in the Horn of Africa.
Laura has done consultancy for a wide range of development and humanitarian organizations, including UNDP, USAID, Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the World Food Programme. She is the author of “This Place Will Become Home: Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia” (Cornell University Press: 2004) and several book and journal articles.
Panel Discussion
“Whose Knowledge, Whose Voice?”
How should history, ethics, and lived experience shape the future of international development?
Moderator: Nigel Brissett, Associate Professor, Clark University, Sustainability and Social Justice
Panelists:
- Manisha Desai, Executive Director, Center for Changing Systems of Power, and Empowerment Trust Endowed Professor of Global Citizenship at SUNY-Stony Brook; author of “Eco-Social Contracts for Sustainable and Just Futures: Mobilising Collective Power to Deal with the 21st Century Polycrisis”
- Jerrold Keilson ’74, co-founder of the Center for Development History
- Peg Spitzer, co-founder of the Climate-Knowledge Collective
