Planning for decolonization? Challenges, transitions, and transformations in global development and planning

Call for working groups and papers

The NFU 2020 Conference will advance the ongoing discussion on decolonization and discuss the knowledge needed to reach the Sustainable development goals (SDGs). Researchers, policy makers and civil society actors are invited to discuss practices, experiences, challenges and future possibilities of knowledge production and its use. 

In this conference, we invite contributions that explore existing gaps and create new dialogues: between the fields of development and planning, between researchers and practitioners, and between systems of knowledge production across multiple world regions. As such, the conference will explore how efforts to address contemporary challenges in development, planning, and decolonization can be approached as mutually complementary rather than mutually exclusive or contradictory. 

NFU has 3 permanent panels (2019-2021): “Political Ecology: Politics, Power, and Environmental Change”, “Religion and Development” and “Challenging Actors in International Development”. We invite proposals for additional working groups and panels to discuss key aspects of the overall topic of the conference.  

• Each working group can have up to three panel sessions, with a minimum of 3 and maximum of 10 papers. It is also possible to propose single panels, consisting of 3-4 paper givers or contributors.
• Working group chairs may propose panels and specify papers, but should also reserve slots for additional papers. All accepted working groups will be listed on the conference website and a call for individual papers will be open during April 2020.
• Chairs are responsible for accepting and allocating suitable individual papers to panels, and for ensuring gender balance as well as a mixture of senior, mid-level and junior scholars in their working group.

For any questions, please contact senior advisor Målfrid Tangedal: malfrid.tangedal@uia.no

The conference is hosted by the Department of Global Development and Planning at the University of Agder, Norway. The program will be announced here shortly.