Category: international development

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DARG Undergraduate Development Dissertation Workshop January 2016

The Developing Areas Research Group (DARG) Undergraduate Development Dissertation Workshop is perfect for undergraduate students who are commencing, preparing or thinking about doing a dissertation on development. The workshop will cover practical issues such as fieldwork and logistics, as well as in depth sessions on methodologies including participatory research methods, documentary analysis, visual methods, and interviews and focus groups. Sessions are held by experts in the field, and graduates in development will also be there to share their experiences.

Tickets are £10 for members, or £12 for non-members, which will include a year’s DARG membership.

Saturday, 16 January 2016 from 10:00 to 17:00 (GMT)

University College London – Gower Street London, Gt Lon WC1E 6BT GB

Tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/2016-darg-undergraduate-development-dissertation-workshop-tickets-19495211703?aff=ebrowse

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DARG Event- Careers in Academia- June 2015

On the 5th June 2015 the annual postgraduate DARG careers workshop took place at the University of Manchester with a focus on pursuing a career in academia. It was a really fantastic and rewarding day with many inspirational and incredibly knowledgeable speakers. Here is what some of the attendees had to say about the event:

“I think one of the best things about the day was that you were able to ‘historically’ track the way the speakers were able to shape their own career direction, and the way they overcame the challenges facing anybody considering an academic job post PhD. The informal nature of the event also allowed for a deeper discussion about work-life balances and how to juggle the different types of roles you have to fulfil to progress in academia.”

“I think the workshop was really good. It got me thinking about the future… the openness of the speakers about the realities, struggles and success of the PhD process and life after was really good to hear. I think more workshops like these need to be organised.”

“I think it was an interesting workshop specially in the context that I got a first hand insight to the struggles/possibilities/flexibilities that an early career researcher can face and how to cope with them. First hand accounts are always immensely useful. Not many conferences talks about such personal journeys.”

We at DARG are really looking forward to organising next years event so please stay tuned if you would be interested in attending.

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David W. Smith Memorial Prize 2015 Winner

We at DARG are delighted to announce the winner of the David W. Smith Memorial Prize 2015, Jack Rogers from Eton School.

The quality and quantity of submissions was high this year so a big congratulations to Jack whose essay to the title ‘Discuss the challenges faced by cities in the developing world in their efforts to become sustainable‘ was awarded first place by the judges. He wins £100 in book vouchers from Routledge Publishers.

We would also like to highly commend Imogen Robinson at The Royal High School, Bath and Lauren Dawe from Mount Kelly, Tavistock for their submissions.

The Developing Areas Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) annual essay competition is in memory of David W. Smith. David W Smith, who also published under the name of David Drakakis Smith, was an outstanding scholar committed to researching on Third World cities. He died in 1999.

The competition is open to A2 level students in England and Wales and Advanced Higher students in Scotland who are invited to write an essay of up to 1500 words to a title chosen by DARG. We will be welcoming submissions once again in February 2016.

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Postgraduate Travel Award

DARG provides an annual award to a postgraduate geography student to encourage and assist fieldwork in developing countries.

It is aimed at those preparing for a PhD in topics related to development studies. Applicants should be based at a British institution of higher education, but may be of any nationality. The award must be spent on travel costs, and preference may be given to students in the early stages of their research. The successful candidate is required to provide a short report for the DARG Website.
The award is £800, although smaller awards are sometimes made.

The annual deadline is 1 May. The criteria for the award are:

· Quality of the project design
· Potential significance of the results
· Support from referee (usually the supervisor)
· Financial need
There is no application form, but the following information must be included in all applications as Word/.pdf documents:

Outline of the proposed research (maximum 3 pages – to include full budget)
A full curriculum vitae (including all qualifications and current institutional affiliation)
Full details of all existing or expected financial support
Applicants must also ensure that a reference (normally from the supervisor) arrives before the deadline. Please note that incomplete or late applications will not be considered. Completed applications will be judged by a panel of development geographers and the result notified in June.

All applications should be sent by email to DARG Chair, Nina Laurie: nina.laurie@st-andrews.ac.uk

Deadline: 1 May 2016

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Development Geography Careers Workshop- 5th June 2015, Manchester

The upcoming DARG workshop ‘Navigating a Career in Academia: Survival Tips for Development Geographers’ will be held on Friday, June 5th 2015, at the University of Manchester.
This one-day workshop is aimed at postgraduate students thinking about how to pursue a career in academia and will cover topics such as publishing from your PhD and how to find the right position for you.
Tickets cost £15 includes lunch. Tickets can be bought HERE
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DARG Undergraduate Development Dissertation Workshop- March 21st 2015

The upcoming DARG Undergraduate Development Dissertation Workshop will be held on Saturday, March 21st 2015, at UCL London.
This one-day workshop is aimed at undergraduate students considering doing their final year dissertation on a topic related to Development Geography while being based abroad or in the UK. It’s a great chance for students to get information and advice on planning and designing their projects, choosing methods and going on fieldwork.
It is £10 for members, £12 to join DARG & attend and includes lunch. Tickets can be bought HERE
A taster of what past workshops have covered can be found HERE
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Call for Papers ‘Family geographies, care and relationality’ paper session. Young People, Borders & Well-Being

Call for Papers ‘Family geographies, care and relationality’ paper session. Young People, Borders & Well-Being, 4th International Conference on Geographies of Children, Young People and Families, San Diego, California, January 12-15, 2015
Session organisers: Ruth Evans, Sophie Bowlby and Sally Lloyd-Evans (University of Reading)
Session theme:
Despite recent interest in relational geographies of age (Hopkins and Pain, 2007) and intergenerationality (Vanderbeck, 2007), research often focuses predominantly on children or youth without paying adequate attention to the complex gendered, age-based, inter- and intra-generational power dynamics that characterise young people’s family lives and connections to others. Analysis of caringscapes and time-space practices of care within family settings bring to the fore questions of relationality. Research suggests that young people’s caring responsibilities in the context of family illness, disability or death and often in low-income households, may have both positive and negative impacts on their wellbeing (Robson, 2004; Evans and Becker, 2009) and may influence young people’s boundary crossings (Valentine, 2003). For example, care may prevent, enable or reconfigure socially expected lifecourse transitions, such as completing education, migrating for work, initiation rites, engaging in intimate relationships, marriage, childbirth and providing for relatives (Punch, 2002; Evans, 2012; 2014). The care provided by other family members – such as by a young person’s parent or sibling to their parent or friends, or the care provided by friends, relatives or professionals to a parent, sibling or other relative – may also impact on young people’s lifecourse transitions and mobilities.
In this session, we hope to explore the informal and formal caring practices and relations that shape young people’s family lives and reflect on the powerful, often emotive discourses associated with ‘family’ in different cultural and policy contexts. We are interested in papers that address a diversity of caring practices and family relations in the global North and South. Care may be undertaken by children, parents or other family members, non-kin significant others or professionals, may be manifested through ‘proximate’ or ‘distant’ caring relations in transnational households, and may focus on care of the living, dead or dying or non-human agents and materialities. We hope that the session will make a significant contribution to the emerging field of family geographies.
Please send your title and abstract of a maximum of 250 words by 1st September 2014 to Ruth Evans (r.evans@reading.ac.uk).
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Call for abstracts: The Third University of Leeds Researchers in Development Network (RiDNet) conference

Call for abstracts: The Third University of Leeds Researchers in Development Network (RiDNet) conference will be taking place on the 12th November 2014. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Does Research Make a Difference in Development? Bridging the gaps between research, policy and practice’ and we are very excited to open up the Calls for Abstracts (attached) to all PhD students and early career researchers across the UK. Deadline for submission for presentation and poster abstracts is 31st August 2014.

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CFP RGS IBG The Shifting Power of Indigeneity: exploring the (co)-production of both rural and urban spaces

The Shifting Power of Indigeneity: exploring the (co)-production of both rural and urban spaces

Call For Papers for RGS IBG annual conference 26-29 August 2014

Sponsored by the Developing Areas Research Group DARG

This session is interested in the multiple and shifting articulations of indigeneity in the contemporary period. It recognises the inherent tensions as well as conflicting understandings of indigeneity, which are articulated and claimed by multiple actors in different countries, histories, political economies and political ecologies.  International legislation often defines indigeneity as identity category bound to ancestral claims to land, relationships to nature and collective decision making. These definitions are often criticised by academics, activists, and indigenous peoples themselves for essentialising cultures, removing people’s agency and grouping together different peoples that are, in fact, living in very different circumstances. However, indigeneity is still being used and claimed by many groups as a political category to gain political recognition, power and rights. Both rural and urban groups, often those who feel marginalised and in the minority, rely on indigeneity as a key political category. This session will explore the multiple and contrasting ways in which indigeneity is being used by various socio-political actors, situated in the global South and North, to shift existing power relations and to (co)-produce rural and urban spaces. Using theories that explore the relationship of indigeneity to political power and wider political economies and ecologies, it is interested in analysing how indigeneity is being articulated in conflicts over land and natural resources, in processes of development, in times of rapid planetary urbanisation, and in moments of political unrest and/or change.

We invite papers that investigate the various ways that indigeneity is articulated and mobilised by multiple actors and the ways it is being responded to by states. We want to explore the spatial impact that this is having in the current political economic and ecological contexts. When addressing these aspects, papers should take into account the following questions: In what contexts and how is indigeneity gaining legitimacy and power? How are relations between ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous’ actors articulated in different spaces? What role does indigeneity play in the (co)-production of different rural and urban places?

Please send 300 word abstract to the session convenors, Jessica Hope and Philipp Horn by the 3rd of February 2014, including your name and contact details

Jessica.Hope-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk  

Philipp.Horn@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

For further information about the conference, please see http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+international+conference.htm