Session description

(8-10 March 2023, Amsterdam)

I. Visual research and collaborations on water justice: from the margins to the centre?

With: Emanuele Fantini (IHE Delft, NL), Ain Contractor (independent researcher, India), Roger Anis (photojournalist, Egypt), Laurens Nijzink (journalists and editor at Voice4thoughts, NL, tbc).

This session builds on the experience of research projects in India and in the Nile basin, that have been experimenting with visual methods to explore the links between nature and society, between humans and non-humans, between social and environmental justice.

We are interested in exploring how to build trans-disciplinary collaborations between researchers, practitioners and communicators (photographers, journalists, …).

One of the features shared by these projects is the approach of working at or from the margins. Therefore, in the session we are keen to discuss if, when, and how, should we attempt to bring the margins at the centre of the political debate and decision-making process, and how the visual can empower us to achieve this goal.

Schedule:

Introduction and moderation, Emanuele Fantini (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education)
Screening of the documentary “Fighting with care” (India, 2022) by Bhargav Prasad & Qurratul Ain Contractor, followed by discussion with Qurratul Ain Contractor.
Presentation of the photostories project #EverydayNile by Roger Anis.
Plenary discussion

II. An inclusive approach to research on migration, mobilities and development

With: Dora Sampaio & Bianca Szytniewski (International Development Studies, Utrecht University)

In this panel, we discuss more inclusive and just approaches to researching migration and mobility studies. We interrogate the role of intergenerational, intersectional and translocal approaches in expanding our understanding of just development. We observe this push for inclusivity, for instance, in the growing focus on rural, peripheral areas in addition to urban centres, on more intersectional approaches instead of a focus on one social category, and on intergenerational studies in addition to research on certain age groups. These shifts are visible for a while, but with this panel, our aim is to bring them into a broader collective conversation in relation to migration, mobilities and development. The focus on inclusiveness puts forward local actors and their role in local development. We depart from a recognition that events occurring in one place, at one time, or in one generation have profound ripple effects across other locales, times, and generations. Focusing on intergenerational, intersectional and translocal approaches to Just development is a productive lens to place justice at the heart of development debates. With a focus on migration and mobilities, the session is driven by three key questions: How to foster development processes that hold intergenerational, intersectional and translocal processes front and centre? How can these three foci help understand and reduce inequalities and vulnerabilities that are (re)produced across time, space and generations? For example, asymmetrical care relations, rural-urban interdependencies, and migration and emplacement dynamics. How can a focus on justice foster reciprocity processes in development and challenge existing power imbalances?

III. Are we JUST teaching IDS? A co-creative workshop to explore regenerative perspectives on re-imagining the study of ID

With: Mieke Lopes Cardozo, Michaela Hordijk, Esther Miedema (GID, UvA) and Bas van den Berg (HHS)

In this workshop, we – a community of practice of regenerative educators – invite you to explore together a range of questions and challenges we encounter in teaching future generations of students to (better) address diverse development challenges in today’s world. The field of (International/Inclusive) development studies has since its inception been focused on past, present and future transitions – or developments – of all kinds. This inter- and transdisciplinary field of study is driven by a concern for (the need to address) inequalities, injustices and so-called wicked challenges, including, for instance, a legacy of colonial informed relations and hierarchies, the implications of climate crises, (in)direct forms of violence, imbalances between (conflicting) human and ecological (more-than-human) interests, and rising inequalities between peoples. These challenges require a continuous re-orientation of the field, as an open-ended process, both for those already working in the field as educators and researchers, and upcoming and future generations of ID students, practitioners and scholars.

In this workshop, we start from the premise that in order to serve larger transitions in the outside world and society, as educators/supervisors in IDS we need to simultaneously work on our own inner development (Mang and Haggard, 2016). We thus connect our critical engagement with sustainable and inclusive development goals, to a commitment to work on our inner development goals (https://www.innerdevelopmentgoals.org).

Our work is grounded in theories on regenerative development and design, decolonial development thinking, systemic co-design and social justice pedagogies, which inform a set of questions we aim to engage with in the workshop:

1. How can we – as scholars, educators and practitioners working in this broad field of international/inclusive development – re-imagine what our field of study and endeavour may look like? What is the unique potential of our roles as educators and the specific group of students we work with? [Ground]

2. What do we mean when we say just international development, and how does this translate into one of our core roles as a university: educating new generations of academically (in)formed development workers/thinkers? [Goal]

What does this mean for the ways in which we (need to) develop ourselves as educators, role-models and engaged researcher-practitioners in a highly transdisciplinary field? What theories/principles can inform (y)our work, and why? How to create a balance between pluralism and offering (students) a sense of direction (and avoid the ‘trappings’ of modernist and universalising explanations and solutions, which we have largely been raised in ourselves)? [Direction]

4. How can we re-think and re-design our education programmes into more regenerative learning spaces, which move beyond a reproduction of status-quo enhancing and flat interpretations of ‘critical thinking’, into radically different ways of learning/thinking/acting in ID? What concretely would that look like in your own educational programmes/courses/supervision? [Instruments]

IV. Women’s Voices, Women’s Stories and Womanhood: Women Refugees and Migrants

With: Phoebe Zoe Maria U. Sanchez, Ph. D. (DeZIM Institut, Berlin, Germany, University of the Philippines Cebu)

The session is about how to trace women’s lives as migrant workers and refugees. It aims to understand how institutions became instruments extending over national borders, and then how they impacted on the women’s autonomy over their bodies, their sexuality, their consciousness, and their material world, or in such areas as craftsmanship, and the gendered roles in the sexual division of labor. It looks into the gaps between the host state’s gender-segregated roles and the shift to new roles as a result of migration and refugee status. Likewise, its impact and changes in contemporary times with the women’s social movements.

The cadences of women’s lived experiences will be expounded by speakers from women’s social movements such us: Migrante Europe, Pinay sa Holland, and BAYAN Europe.

“Women’s voices, women’s stories and womanhood: A survey of Migrant and Refugee Women’s Participation in the Gendered Division of Labor in Migrant Society”

By: Phoebe Zoe Maria U. Sanchez, Ph. D., BAYAN Europe (DeZIM Institut, Berlin, Germany, University of the Philippines Cebu)

“Gender Segregated Roles and the Struggle for Better Wages and Benefit Schemes”

By: Ms. Maru Grace Labasan Suarez and Ms. Nenet de los Santos, Pinay sa Holland

“Women Migrants and the Philippine Labor Export Policy”

By: Ms. Mitchy Saturay, Vice Chair of Migrante Europe (Filipino Migrant People’s Organization)

V. The making of urban inequality: reflections on decolonizing urban knowledge. Organised by: Nicky Pouw and Hebe Verrest (GID, UvA)

Description not available

VI. The justice implications of leaving fossil fuels underground: mapping stakeholders and mobilizing agents of change.

Organised by: Frank de Morrée; Nina Herzog-Hawelka; Augusto Heras; Moataz Talaat; Clara McDonnell; Opal Morales Asencio; Crelis Rammelt (GID, UvA).

Description: Leaving fossil fuels underground (LFFU) is critical for mitigating the worsening impacts of climate change. The modes, spatialities, and temporalities of LFFU will have drastic implications for possibilities of inclusive development. Large investors and stakeholders in the fossil fuel sector have a critical role in shaping the energy transition, whether through delaying or accelerating processes of LFFU. This interactive and collaborative workshop will examine the role of key actors, including oil and gas companies, low- and middle-income countries with fossil fuel reserves, development banks, pension funds, philanthropies, and public-private partnerships, in LFFU, as well as the countervailing movements and powers with the potential to accelerate LFFU. The session will begin with a short presentation of the findings of the UvA CLIFF (Climate Change and Fossil Fuels) project and by exploring some of the key barriers preventing these actors from taking ambitious action on LFFU: including legal, institutional, economic, financial, and political barriers. Working from this common base, participants will be invited to think together through the motivations, incentives, and opportunities for stakeholders, mapping potential areas of collaboration or conflict. With an eye towards transformative justice, we hope to pool our collective ideas and creativity to identify ‘agents of change’ and explore the conditions, circumstances, and resources needed for such transformation.