Debating Development Research

10/06/2025

Epistemic (Ir)relevance, Language & Passport Positionality

The three hurdles I’m navigating as a UK-based Ethiopian academic

By Eyob Balcha Gebremariam / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project

I write this reflection piece to use my personal experiences as a UK-based academic with an Ethiopian passport as a lens to comment on the structural power asymmetries of the academic landscape. I believe I’m not the only one facing these challenges. However, there is hardly sufficient attention, recognition, and space to discuss them. I have no intention of reducing the importance of other challenges by focusing on these three topics. I focused on the three hurdles because I experience them in everyday scholarly work and am determined to engage in critical discussions and reflections.

04/06/2025

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.

27/05/2025

EADI at 50: Thinking Through the Winter, Looking to the Spring and the Next Chapter

By Andy Sumner

We marked EADI’s 50th anniversary with a conference last week. As EADI president I reflect on this jubilee moment drawing from my opening remarks.

Anniversaries are an opportunity for both reflection and anticipation. As EADI marks its 50th year, we find ourselves, once again, in difficult global times. In the mid-1970s, amid oil shocks, the collapse of Bretton Woods fixed exchange rates, and a crisis of the post-war development model, EADI was founded. Today, the international order appears equally unstable—fractured by a resurgence of nationalism, institutional retreat, and weakened global cooperation. The past and present resonate uncomfortably.

20/05/2025

From SDGs to GPTs: Trading Solidarity for AI Automation?

By Ron Salaj

In this historical moment of a deepening global polycrisis, artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to emerge as the new knowledge regime promising to transform the world. This has been amplified with the arrival of ChatGPT and other generative AI systems in 2022, which have introduced a shift in how AI interacts with people, society and institutions.

13/05/2025

The End of Development Aid?

By Aram Ziai

In the last few months, our object of research has seen some dramatic changes. I am referring to the de-facto dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) after the inauguration of President trump in January 2025. The USA has been by far the largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) during the past decades (although in relation to its GDP it has been among the less generous). In February 2025, the Trump administration has announced to eliminate more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and 60 billion US-$ in assistance.