{"id":2173,"date":"2025-11-07T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/?p=2173"},"modified":"2025-11-11T11:52:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T09:52:12","slug":"devdays-2026-call-for-papers-and-participations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/?p=2173","title":{"rendered":"Call for Papers and Participation: Development Days Conference 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

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#DevDays2026 | FSDR@40<\/strong><\/p>\n

Development in Ruins, Hope in the Cracks:\u00a0<\/strong>A\u00a0Time for Reckoning, Reclaiming, and Reawakening<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

University of Helsinki, Finland | 26\u201327 February 2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Concept Note\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We live in a ruined and ruining world. The postwar program and edifice of \u201cdevelopment\u201d as we know it\u2014built on the assumptions of linear progress, donor-driven\u00a0aid, and international cooperation\u2014is crumbling. Development\u2019s failures, rooted in the colonial and capitalist world-system, are manifest: in the stark precarity and inequalities sharpening under economic neoliberalism; in the climate emergency spiraling beyond control; in the defunding of social institutions and public services amid rising securitization and militarization; in the surge of reactionary, ethno-nationalist, and authoritarian-populist politics eroding human dignity and global solidarities; and in the realities of genocide, forced displacement, and mass starvation\u2013cruelties inflicted against humanity.<\/p>\n

These\u00a0ruins\u00a0<\/strong>in the contemporary polycrisis, entangled with the history of extractive capitalism and colonialism, demand profound reckoning. Yet, in the\u00a0cracks<\/strong>\u2014within the fissures and margins of the prevailing disorder\u2014seeds of\u00a0hope\u00a0<\/strong>are already germinating. This hope is found both in the recognition of diverse forms of human coexistence that predate Western hegemony, and in vibrant new movements. From struggles for climate action, equality, peace, and food sovereignty, to feminist economies of care and Indigenous knowledge reclamations, to the uprisings led by students and the youth, people are reawakening consciousness and reclaiming agency, spaces, and the commons. These are not simply strategies of survival, but practices of community-building and world-making that prefigure life beyond the colonial capitalist paradigm of development.<\/p>\n

Coinciding with the\u00a040th anniversary of the Finnish Society for Development Research<\/strong>, the\u00a0#DevDays2026\u00a0<\/strong>international conference calls on scholars, practitioners, and activists to share their studies, reflections, advocacies, and experiences in engaging this dialectic of ruin and hope. We ask: How do we reckon with the ruins of development? How do we learn from, and nurture, the cracks where hope takes root? And how do we reawaken political consciousness for socio-ecological and economic-cultural transformation?<\/p>\n

This gathering is more than critique. It is an invitation to self-reflection on\u00a0Reckoning, Reclaiming, Reawakening\u00a0<\/strong>toward renewal. As we reflect on four decades of critical development research in Finland, we take up the challenge not only to analyze collapse but to actively participate in the collective labor of reimagining and advancing futures of justice, care, and solidarity.<\/p>\n

Keynote Speakers\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n