Development Geographies Research Group

January 26, 2026

DevGRG Session Sponsorship at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2026

The Development Geographies Research Group (DevGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) (RGS-IBG) invites expressions of interest for sponsored sessions at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2026.

The conference will be held in London, hosted across the RGS and Imperial College London, with provisions for online participation. It is scheduled to run from Tuesday, 1 September, to Friday, 4 September 2026. Further details can be found on the RGS‑IBG website.

This year, the conference will be chaired by Professor Peter Hopkins (Newcastle University, UK), who has selected the theme of “Geographies of inequalities: towards just places”.

We are keen to sponsor sessions that directly relate to the conference theme but also those sessions that engage with broader issues of contemporary concern to development geographers. Proposed sessions may adopt diverse formats, including traditional paper presentations, panel discussions, or more experimental and creative approaches. Specific guidelines for session organisers are available via the RGS-IBG website.

Congratulations to our 2025 Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Winner

The submission standard for this year’s wide and fascinating range of entries was very high – well done to all entrants for their work.

Winner: Maryam Jimale, London School of Economics.

Dissertation title: “Somali Pastoralists, NGOs and the Politics of Ecological Authority”.‘

‘Somali Pastoralists, NGOs and the Politics of Ecological Authority’ is an impressive and compelling dissertation that investigates how Somali pastoralists’ traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is absorbed, reflected and represented by NGOs working in community-based adaptation programmes, and at the international level (COP29). The student generated methodologically rigorous and innovative data by engaging directly with TEK holders, as well as NGO practitioners in United Nations spaces and online. The dissertation develops a highly astute analysis that links findings to existing scholarship on TEK, development politics, feminism, and science and technology studies. It contains a particularly good discussion of epistemic resistance. Overall, this is a highly original dissertation in an under-researched area.

June 23, 2025

A Blog Post by Nicolas Mouros, University of Bristol: A DevGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Winner (2024)

How did you come up with the topic?

The theme of my dissertation was inspired by a conversation with my friend Vijdan 3 years ago. We were driving to Kayalar/Όργα in Cyprus for our annual swim and ekmek kadayifi. Vijdan told me to look outside the window. She said, “all this water in this dam here – is all from Turkey”. I was shocked.

The conversation was a turning point, as it made me think why I had never considered water’s role in the militarisation and division of my island. Over the past decades, across the divide of Cyprus, a growing movement has emerged that places environmental justice and reunification as an interconnected struggle. I saw a gap in my understanding which also extends to environmental groups and the reunification community as well. There has been minimal engagement with the political economy and historical context of water on the island, beyond climate change narratives. As a result, this dissertation project became a collective mission for me to attempt to understand the connections between the division of Cyprus and the political ecology of water management through the lens of the commons. This project felt meaningful and important because the current status-quo of water management is defined by colonial struggles, ecological degradation and neoliberalism. I wanted to write a dissertation that is reflexive and disruptive of this reality.

Which scholars or activists influenced you?

My dissertation was influenced by different viewpoints from the political ecology of water and the commons. Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw’s work on neoliberalism, state building, and water management was foundational to my writing. It made it clear to me that water is not scarce by nature, but becomes scarce through the market and extractivist water practices. Moreover, the book ‘Divided Environments’ by Clemens Hoffman, Jan Selby and Gabrielle Daoust was inspirational as it applied a political ecology lens to Cyprus’ waters. The authors politicised different water infrastructure with a critic to water scarcity and mainstream climate change narratives. Their analysis helped shape my own understanding of these issues. At the same time, growing up in Cyprus allowed me to engage with their work critically, as someone with lived experience of the island’s division. I found that scholars that research Cyprus – but only spent a limited amount of time there – don’t appreciate the everyday embodied struggles of reunification and the epistemologies that come with them.

From the world of the commons, I incorporated the ‘decommonisation’ argument by Nayak Pratteep, which places the commons as dynamic processes rather than a fixed point. I approached this body of work with an experimental approach – where I applied it to commoning of divided water – a commons that is not necessarily tangible.

Astrida Neimani’s transformative-feminist body of work ‘Hydro Commons’ was influential. It let me reimagine water bodies beyond their neutral and technocratic capitalist abstraction. It raised the importance of embodying water and placing the lived experience of water struggle and emancipation as a centre to the analysis.

Finally, my research was influenced by the local activists, artists, and architects I had the honour to interview. Our conversations, disagreements and drawings shaped this dissertation. Their subjectivities, lived experiences, and activism enabled reimagination of water in Cyprus, but also a realisation of how the current partitionist and neoliberal water governance is eroding water commons.

Any challenges you faced as a researcher?

I would say the biggest challenge I faced in my research project is the University of Bristol’s austerity-driven approach to education. The department of Geographical Sciences has amazing and dedicated academics, but it is also understaffed. As an undergraduate student, I saw the effects of this. Staff were overworked and unable to give each student the time and support their dissertation deserved in my opinion. This was not a matter of unwillingness on their behalf but an institutional problem, which left me feeling isolated at times, especially when I was excited to explore my research interests deeper.

Any tips for other undergraduate students embarking on a dissertation project?

Honestly, I would say the biggest tip is to calm down. There is so much stress about choosing a dissertation topic that is academically relevant and interesting. We live in an era defined by struggle and injustice but also empowerment and transformation. Human geography needs more research projects that are personal, subjective, maybe messy, but most importantly meaningful.

We are exposed to so much critical theory, and while that is important, I think the right step is to connect it with themes that speak to us and our experiences. One quote I read in a social ecology book, and I deeply resonate with is that “research is not about the interpretation of the world, but the organisation of social transformation”. Some aspects of human geography have the temptation to produce clever interpretations of space as the end goal of research. We are not studying just to be smart, but to do something meaningful with what we learn.

Has the dissertation as a project been transformative for you?

Absolutely! The dissertation opened new doors to me. The political ecology literature has transformed my perspectives of environmental change beyond notions of environmental liberalism. I was able to reimagine water bodies and reformulate them as commons that oppose the militarisation and division of Cyprus. This was a very meaningful outcome for me as I was able to share my research results with the local community of activists in Cyprus and initiate a deeper discussion on this topic.

In my dissertation I used participatory sketching as a research method with the activists involved in the project. This highlighted to me the power of the visual to spark reimagination and shape how we understand geography. Since September, I’ve been pursuing a master’s in Multidisciplinary Printmaking, where I have been exploring the themes of my dissertation: water scarcity, commons and divided environments through printmaking.

November 15, 2024

IDPR Early Career Best Paper

We are very pleased to announce the winners of this year’s IDPR Early Career Best Paper Prize!

This prize is a collaboration with the International Development Planning Review journal, and we’d like to thank the editors for working with us. The prize is awarded to the best paper presented at a DevGRG sponsored session at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference. The winners will now work with the editors of the Journal, Dr Dan Hammett and Dr Glyn Williams, to develop their paper for publication followed by a standard peer review process.

This year, the editors have made a joint award to Alves et al. and Wakonyo et al. – the respective first authors are Marina Alves and Dianne Wakonyo – huge congratulations!

The papers are titled:

Alves, M., Pinto, G., Albernaz, P. ‘Exploring Opportunities for Local Populations: Mapping Industrial Remnants in Rio de Janeiro’s Railway Suburban Areas’

Wakonyo, D., Kuffer, M., Thomson, D., Wanjiru, N. ‘He Who Makes the Map Tells the Story’

The editors have also selected a ‘Highly Commended’ paper, awarded to Amrita Dasgupta for their paper titled ‘Drawing the Water-Human Relation in Ostracised Occupations of Deltaic Ecologies of the Indian Ocean’ – huge congratulations to Amrita as well!

Details of these papers can be found below

This year’s award really speaks to the excellent quality of the papers that were presented at DevGRG-sponsored RGS AC2024 sessions, and I know you’ll join me in congratulating these early career scholars for their success.

We look forward to seeing the papers in print!

Abstracts

Exploring Opportunities for Local Populations: Mapping Industrial Remnants in Rio de Janeiro’s Railway Suburban Areas

Marina Alves, Gabriele Pinto, and Paula Albernaz

Abstract: This paper introduces a collaborative digital mapping project focused on the industrial remnants in the railway suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, exploring opportunities for addressing the impacts of deindustrialization on local populations. This project is part of the LAPU (Laboratory of Urban Projects) at the Graduate Program in Urbanism (PROURB) – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, coordinated by Prof. Dr. Maria Paula Albernaz. Starting in 1980, the economic crisis (Palma, 2014; Rodrik, 2016; Harvey, 1989), uncontrolled inflation, and external debt led to the closure of numerous factories in these suburbs of Rio, resulting in a significant decline in industrial productivity. Over the following decades, the suburban landscape underwent dramatic changes: factories were repurposed for new commercial uses (Schindler et al., 2020), replaced by vertical condominiums, or occupied informally, contributing to the expansion of favelas in the region. The development of new housing projects often failed to meet the needs of the working class, further deepening social and spatial segregation (Caldeira, 1997). At a theoretical level, this paper engages with the question posed by Brazilian geographer Milton Santos (1996) regarding whether these urban forms – marked by their size and historical significance – can foster urban transformation through social action. Empirically, we showcase significant examples of these former industrial spaces that have either been incorporated into the formal city by the real estate sector or have been informally appropriated. Our aim is to uncover the underexplored dimensions of suburban production, logic, and modes of existence that have led to segregation, contradiction, and new entanglements, exploring the interplay between the social and spacial realms, as well as the materiality and practices associated with these spaces.

He Who Makes the Map Tells the Story

Dianne Wakonyo, Monika Kuffer, Dana Thomson, Nicera Wanjiru

Abstract: Traditional cartographic practice creates inequality between those who map and those who are mapped, with the latter having little say, if any, on what is worth documenting and what is not. If places are mapped, what is generally missing are the assets of communities. In the case of informal settlements, this asymmetry has an additional layer of who has access to mapped data and therefore makes use of it. The CommunityMappers initiative aims to challenge this epistemic injustice by equipping community members with mapping and data collection skills, consequently breaking down the obstacles that communities in informal settlements would have in developing their own mapping agenda, carrying out mapping exercises and using the data gathered to better advocate for the needs of the community. This paper examines how traditional mapping practices have contributed to power imbalances between formal mappers and informal communities, and investigates the potential of participatory mapping initiatives to mitigate these disparities. It aims to answer the following questions: (1) How does traditional mapping practice contribute to power imbalances between those who map and those who are mapped, particularly in informal settlements? (2) How can participatory mapping initiatives, such as CommunityMappers, enhance the influence and participation of marginalised communities in urban planning and policymaking? (3) What are the challenges and opportunities of community-led mapping in informal settlements, and how can these initiatives be made more sustainable and impactful? The study used a mixed-methods approach, and drew on participatory action research that focused on informal settlements in Kenya and Nigeria. The methodology included co-designing a community data collection curriculum with community members, providing training in data collection and analysis, and evaluating the effectiveness of community-generated maps in influencing policy. The findings suggest that community-led mapping strengthens community agency by enabling residents to identify and prioritise their concerns, gather data, and advocate for their neighbourhoods. The CommunityMappers methodology confronts epistemic injustice by recognising and incorporating community-held knowledge, enhancing data literacy skills, and amplifying community voices in advocacy initiatives. While community-led mapping offers significant benefits, challenges such as limited political support for incorporating community findings, data reliability, and sustainability remain. This study demonstrates how participatory mapping can help mitigate power imbalances in urban planning and provide marginalised communities with tools for advocacy. The CommunityMappers model offers a scalable and sustainable framework for integrating community knowledge into formal mapping processes.

Drawing the Water-Human Relation in Ostracised Occupations of Deltaic Ecologies of the Indian Ocean.

Amrita Dasgupta

Abstract: The sex workers of Mongla reside on the banks of the Passur River. Their occupational land is being gnawed at by the river forcing them to conduct sex trade on the remaining land or on the boats. The women of Mongla brothel are in a continuous conflict with the Bangladesh Government to safeguard their legal “right to livelihood” since 2010 which should get them secured rehabilitation. However, such struggles have yielded no outcomes yet and is rendered complicated given the land ownership history of the space. Their uncelebrated and unarchived lives, I realized would undergo trauma if pushed for direct interviews as part of the research. Hence, I resorted to arts-based research: I condensed the questionnaire into keywords and in a six-month long workshop, each week, I provided them with words that resonated with their lives; such as water, friendships, soil, fish, men. Depending on what kind of emotions these words invoked in them, the sex workers painted for a week and came back to the weekly workshop with their drawings and described them. The descriptions provided an unique widow into their lives and relationship with the water that surrounds them, that no interviews could ever archive. Thus, adding to the scholarship of studying colonial environmental manipulations through port building which continues to affect the marginalised communities living on costal embankments in deltaic geographies. The artistic project provided the sex workers the space to control their narrative and speak about their history, life and livelihood without trauma. The paper is divided into three parts as guided by the stories reflected through the art work: (I) Past and Present of the Mongla Port and Brothel (II) Methodology: Arts-Based Research (III) History and Stories of Life, Livelihood of the Community from Art Pieces.

September 3, 2024September 3, 2024

DevGRG AGM, 5th of September, 1-2:30pm

Join us for the DevGRG AGM — an open space for all members to share their ideas. We welcome everyone’s input to shape the direction of travel and future of our group.

The event is online and scheduled for Thursday the 5th of September, 1-2:30pm.

Agenda

Welcome and Introduction (Katharina Richter)

Treasurer’s Report (Regina Hansda)

Membership Update (Kat Richter)

Finance Discussion – Awards, fees and non-UK/Global South membership fees (ALL)

Reports from other Committee members

New Committee Members

Discussion of plans for the coming year (ALL)

Please email Kat Richter, k.richter@bristol.ac.uk, to receive the Zoom meeting link.

We hope you can make it!

January 20, 2024

Call for Sponsored Sessions, RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2024, London

The Development Geographies Research Group of the RGS-IBG invites session proposals for (co-)sponsorship by our Research Group for the 2024 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference. The conference will be held in London at the Society and Imperial College London, and online, from Tuesday 27 to Friday 30 August 2024.

Guidance for organising sessions is available here.

Session sponsorship means that a session is tagged in the conference programme with the Research Group’s name and gives session organisers the opportunity to promote the session through our Research Group networks.

Unfortunately, session sponsorship does not include financial sponsorship. DevRG is however able to offer a limited number of guest passes (covering the registration fee for a day’s in-person attendance at the conference, but not travel or accommodation). The application process for guest passes will be announced via our mailing list later in spring 2023.

The Chair of the 2024 conference is Professor Stephen Legg (University of Nottingham, UK). The conference theme is Mapping. The theme will explore mapping in all its forms, in a world that is saturated with maps, from historical cartography to the newest technologies and practices of map-making.

We are keen to sponsor sessions that directly relate to the conference theme but also those sessions that engage with broader issues of contemporary concern to development geographers. The sessions can be pitched as paper panels, roundtables, workshops and sessions that include Development practitioners. We strongly encourage innovative and inclusive formats. We also strongly encourage sessions which are led by or include scholars or practitioners based in the Global South. We particularly welcome applications for the following themes:

Geographies of counter-mapping
The power to map in a development context
The epistemic, discursive, and/or spatial role of mapping in development projects
Colonial histories of mapping in development geographies

Opportunities for hybrid sessions are available, but very limited. They will be allocated on an open, competitive basis, with priority for innovative sessions that make the most of hybrid opportunities and functionality. You will need to think in advance whether to pivot to in-person only or online only if you are not successful. Guidance on formats can be found here.

The deadline is Wednesday, 14 February 2023 at 5pm.Please contact DevGRG Co-Chair Dr Katharina Richter if you would like your session to be considered for sponsorship (k.richter@bristol.ac.uk). We will endeavour to notify you as soon as possible. There are no forms, if you are interested, please email us with the following information:

1. Title of session

2. Name of co-sponsoring groups (if applicable)

3. Name, affiliation, and contact details for session convenors

4. Session abstract (max 300 words, excl. references)

5. Indication (if known) of preferred session format (in-person, hybrid, or online) and session type (papers, panel, workshop, etc.). See here for some suggestions. Sessions will be limited to TWO timeslots in the programme. A timeslot is 1 hour 40 minutes

6. Indication of any non-standard arrangements and/or hybrid session requirements (and a justification how the hybrid session would be competitive).

Details of the individual papers in the session are not required at this point.

Please also indicate if you are applying or intend to apply for sponsorship with any other research group.

For more information on the RGS Development Geographies Research Group see https://developmentgeographiesrg.org/.

For more information on RGS Annual International Conference see: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/

Full call for sessions can be found here: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/call-for-sessions-papers-and-posters

January 23, 2023January 23, 2023

Call for Sponsored Sessions, RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London

Development Geographies Research Group (DevRG)

The Development Geographies Research Group of the RGS-IBG invites session proposals for (co-)sponsorship by our Research Group for the 2023 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference. The conference will be held from Wednesday 30^th August to Friday 1^st September in London. Session sponsorship means that a session is tagged in the conference programme with the Research Group’s name and gives session organisers the opportunity to promote the session through our Research Group networks.

The 2023 Conference Chair is Professor Harriet Bulkeley, Durham University, and the conference theme is Climate changed geographies. The theme invites a conversation about how climate change is, and is not, changing our discipline – our ways of knowing, exploring, understanding and acting geographically – and with what consequences. It also opens up debates about the kinds of geographies – urban, political, social, cultural, economic, regional, glacial, fluvial and more – that are and are not being changed by climate change.

We are keen to sponsor sessions that directly relate to the conference theme but also those sessions that engage with broader issues of contemporary concern to development geographers. The sessions can be pitched as paper panels, roundtables, workshops and sessions that include Development practitioners. We strongly encourage innovative and inclusive formats. We also strongly encourage sessions which are led by or include scholars or practitioners based in the Global South. We would be particularly interested in session proposals on the following themes:

Geographies of extraction
Ecological debt and climate reparations
Indigenous territories and climate knowledges
Decarbonisation and development

The deadline is Monday, 13 February 2023 at 5pm.Please contact DevRG Co-Chairs Dr Kalpana Wilson and Dr Katharina Richter if you would like your session to be considered for sponsorship (k.wilson@bbk.ac.uk and k.richter@bristol.ac.uk). We will endeavour to notify you as soon as possible. There are no forms, if you are interested, please email us with the following information:

1. Title of session

2. Name of co-sponsoring groups (if applicable)

3. Name, affiliation, and contact details for session convenors

4. Session abstract (max 300 words, excl. references)

6. Indication of any non-standard arrangements and/or hybrid session requirements (and a justification how the hybrid session would be competitive).

Details of the individual papers in the session are not required at this point.

This year marks the return of the DevRG’s Early Career Best Paper Prize. It is awarded with the IDPR Journal, whose editors (Dr Dan Hammett & Dr Glyn Williams) will work together with the winner of the prize to develop their paper for publication. Candidates can submit an abstract and a paper outline to be judged by a panel. The paper will then undergo a normal peer review process. Only papers from sessions sponsored by DevRG can apply. Further details on the entry process will be circulated via our mailing list, website and twitter account shortly.

For more information on the RGS Development Geographies Research Group see https://developmentgeographiesrg.org/.

For more information on RGS Annual International Conference see: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/

Full call for sessions can be found here:

https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/call/

January 22, 2023January 22, 2023

Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Winner 2022

The Developing Areas Research Group offers an annual prize for the most promising dissertation concerning ‘Development Geographies’. The author of the winning dissertation receives a £100 book voucher. This year, the voucher was for the Lighthouse, an independent bookshop in Edinburgh.

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2022 prize is Samuel Street from UCL with the dissertation title: ‘Navigating the maelstrom: The conjunctural geographies of Nigerian online freelancers’. Many congratulations, Samuel!

Navigating the Maelstrom is a highly original dissertation that is both theoretically advanced and empirically grounded. It advances the emerging area of labour geographies on the ‘gig economy’ by moving past the Western academic focus on the ‘proletariat’ lens of unstable work to also engage in the ‘generative possibilities’ of recentering young Nigerians as protagonists in their own narratives of economic agency.

We would also like to congratulate Megan Clark from the University of Edinburgh whose dissertation was highly commended. Megan’s dissertation was titled: ‘When the taps run dry’: living with crumbling water infrastructure in high-density suburbs and informal settlements in urban Zimbabwe’.

When the taps run dry is an excellent piece of work, both detailed in theoretical and empirical analysis and clear and engaging in tone. It brings together under-researched concepts of ‘everyday practices’ and ‘heterogeneous infrastructure configurations’ to make a strong and original contribution to research in development geographies, through exploration of the notion of ’embodied infrastructure’. The qualitative research in urban Zimbabwe uncovers some fascinating findings.

The prize will be running again at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, the deadline is usually 1 July. Please check our website and twitter for updates.

June 2, 2022June 2, 2022

David W. Smith Memorial Prize 2022

The Development Geographies Research Group (DevGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) runs an annual essay competition. This competition is in memory of David W. Smith, an outstanding scholar committed to researching cities in the Global South. He died in 1999. This year, we invite Y12/Lower Sixth students from across the UK to submit their entries.

Theme: This year we are delighted to run a photo essay competition with the theme of ‘Repair, Recovery and Reparation’ specifically addressing the question – How do individuals, communities and/or environments repair, recover and seek reparation after a disaster? The theme for the competition engages with the RGS-IBG’s Annual Conference https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/chair-s-theme/.

We encourage all students to submit 3 images exploring the theme. Each image should tell their story clearly supplemented with a title and a description of no longer than 300 words. Please explain how the photographs interpret the theme.

Submission

All entries must be in PDF/JPEG/.jpg or word doc format (not more than 3MB) and appropriately cited. Kindly include your name, school/college, and contact details.

Please submit your entries (and any questions) to the DevGRG schools prize committee at developmentgeographies.rgs@gmail.com by 1^st August 2022 at 23:59 UK time. Entries received after this time will not be accepted. Due to the volume of entries we receive, we will only contact you if you are selected as one of our winners.

By submitting your photo-essay to this competition, you acknowledge that you are the only author of your work and that is it your original work.

Judging

The judging panel will comprise of committee members of DevGRG. The panel will assess the entries and determine the winning entry based on theme, imagination and originality, quality of the photographs, and the development of ideas through the description of the photos.

Prize

The winner receives an RGS certificate and a book voucher of £100.

August 17, 2020

Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Winner 2020

The Developing Areas Research Group in conjunction with Routledge offers an annual prize for the most promising dissertation concerning ‘Development Geographies’. The author of the winning dissertation receives £100 worth of Routledge books of their choice.

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2020 prize is Rai Saad Khan from the University of Oxford with the dissertation title: ‘Lahore’s Performative Statehoods: A study of the form and practices of statehood of the Walled City of Lahore Authority in Pakistan’. Many congratulations, Rai!

We would also like to congratulate Wafia Yahyaoui from Queen Mary, University of London whose dissertation was highly commended. Wafia’s dissertation was titled: ‘”Life is Expensive…” Navigating Waithood in Oran, Algeria’.

The prize will be running again at the end of the 2020-21 academic year, the deadline is usually 1 July. Please check our website and twitter for updates.