DSAI ANNUAL CONFERENCE

This 2 days in-person conference explores how today's turbulent global landscape is reshaping international development cooperatives.

International development is at an inflection point with the current conjuncture defined by a conflation of interacting destructive forces, disruptions, uncertainties, and opportunities for change. Geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting with new actors and institutions now influencing the postwar development cooperation regime. Multilateralism and the liberal international order are crumbling while the rise of China and South-South development cooperation is influencing a profound shift in development thinking. This coincides with a renewed role for the state, state interventionism and the increasing influence of state capitalism in development cooperation. Political convulsions in some of the longest-standing democracies are birthing discourses that actively undermine fundamental democratic principles, commitments to global cooperation and universal values, instead seeing a rise of isolationism and withdrawal from international institutions. As the impacts of climate change unfold, a series of sharp intersecting inequalities fuelled by uneven and combined development continues to accelerate. These interacting, intersecting events and transformations hold profound implications for international development cooperation governance and practices.

This conference examines how, why, and in what ways the contemporary conjuncture can be understood, and what possibilities and future pathways exist for development cooperation. It explores discursive framings, structural features, and agent-based possibilities and mechanisms embedded within the current order that could shift the focus from conflict, crisis, and competition, toward cooperation, consensus, and community.

Conference Outline Programme:

Thursday 15th January 2026

09:15 – 09:30 Registration

09:30 – 13:30 Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Impact (Research Relationship Brokering) With Maire Brophy Consulting

14:00 – 15:30 Welcome Address & Conference Opening Opening Plenary

KEYNOTE ADDRESS by:

Prof. Alfredo Saad Filo, Queen's University Belfast

Prof. Owen Worth, University of Limerick

& Facilitated Discussion

15:30 – 16:00 Tea/Coffee

16:00 – 17:30 Afternoon Parallel Sessions x 5

17:30 – 18:00 Meet the Authors (Pádraig Carmody & Sinéad Walsh - main auditorium)

18:00 – 19:00 Wine Reception

Friday 16th January 2026

09:15 Arrival and Welcome

09:30 – 10:30 KEYNOTE ADDRESS by:

Assoc. Prof. Divine Fuh, University of Cape Town

& Facilitated Discussion

10:30 – 11:00 Tea/Coffee & Refreshments & Poster Presentations

11:00 – 12:30 Morning Parallel Sessions x 6

12:30 – 14:00 Lunch, Tea/Coffee

13:30 – 14:00 Annual General Meeting (AGM)

14:00 – 15:30 Afternoon Parallel Sessions x 6

15:30 – 15:45 Tea/Coffee

15:45 – 16:30 KEYNOTE ADDRESS by:

Assoc. Prof. Su-Ming Khoo, University of Galway

& Facilitated Discussion

16:30 – 17:30 Closing Plenary / Reflections

17:30 Conference Close