A message from Sam Hickey, Head of the Global Development Institute
23 Apr 2026
Sam celebrates the success of the GDI conference, a new dual PhD award with the University of Ghana and a busy and exciting month
It’s been a busy few weeks for the Global Development Institute on multiple fronts: there’s been student fieldtrips to Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa and a stream of research workshops covering a diverse range of topics. In late March we were delighted to launch a new dual PhD award with our partners at the University of Ghana. And on 13-14 April we held a major international conference on the future of global development.
Clearly, the world order is undergoing a period of major upheaval. The second Trump presidency has accelerated several trends that were already undermining the so-called ‘liberal international order’. Assaults on international norms and the slashing of aid budgets – by the UK and several European countries as well as the USA – have led some observers to proclaim ‘The End of Development’. Within this context, our conference was planned to help define how our field and GDI itself moves forward during a particularly challenging period for global development.
We were delighted to host a stellar cast of six international keynote speakers – including Daniela Gabor, Yuen Yuen Ang, Ken Opalo and Winnie Byanyima – and over 60 papers in parallel sessions. We drew heavily both on GDI’s in-house expertise and that of our partners based in the majority world. For example, the Second Cold War Observatory, co-founded by GDI’s Seth Schindler, explores the new geopolitics of development, whilst OneWorldTogether, founded by Niki Banks, models an alternative form of global solidarity and financing that challenges older models.
Our partners from the Universities of Birzeit, BRAC, Ghana and Nairobi pushed us towards exploring a new geopolitics of knowledge production, led by majority world actors and priorities. SDI, our key practice partner, helped show how academics can deliver real impact when adopting a decolonised approach to action research, as through the African Cities Research Consortium.
The 200 attendees included policy actors from major international development agencies and local civil society organisations here in Manchester, as well as academics. It was great to hear that some of the sharpest questions came from our own PGT students, several of whom volunteered to help with conference admin during the event. Of course, the heavy lifting on the organisational front was done by our wonderful support staff. Huge thanks to Hannah Laycock, our departmental administrator, and to Skyla Baily and Louisa Hann from our comms team, for ensuring that the whole event ran smoothly.
The conference also included the launch of Jim O’Neil’s new BRICS+ Thinking initiative, which marks 25 years since he coined the term to capture the rising influence of countries like Brazil, China and India. In a session chaired by our Dean Fiona Devine, Jim and his colleague Gemma Cheng'er Deng from KCL discussed how the initiative will generate insights into how new forms of north-south cooperation can emerge within the changing world order. We’re pleased to have joined BRICS+ Thinking as a partner and look forward to working with Jim, Gemma and other colleagues at UoM to ensure it advances thinking and practice on these key questions.
Finally, the conference gave us the chance to celebrate the outstanding career of Professor David Hulme who retires at the end of July this year after forty years of service to the University. Nobody has done more to advance development studies at Manchester than David and his wider contributions to the field have been exceptional and enduring. It was fitting that this closing session was introduced by our Vice Chancellor Duncan Ivison and closed with a standing ovation to one of our field’s finest.
Did the conference arrive at a clear answer to our question of ‘What is the future for Global Development’? Of course not! There were too many diverse and contested perspectives for that. Nonetheless, a closing plenary session involving members of GDI’s International Advisory Board did distil some key lessons; these will directly inform GDI as it embarks on a participatory process of rethinking its strategic approach in a rapidly changing context.
We already knew that the old world of Western-led development was deeply problematic. The challenge is to work even more closely with our partners to identify new approaches to advancing social and environmental justice, not only in the majority world but also closer to home.
One example of how we’re trying to reimagine the role of development studies is through our forging of equitable partnerships with partners in the majority world. Operating within University of Manchester’s recently adopted Africa Strategy, the aim is to challenge some of the inequalities that define international research partnerships across the global north-south divide.
On this front, I’m delighted that we’ve launched a new dual PhD award with partners at the University of Ghana, UoM’s first PhD award to be shared with a university in Africa. The aim is to co-produce the next generation of Ghanaian scholars to conduct impactful research and build successful careers whilst sharing-capacity with our partner organisations. The initiative will provide six fully funded studentships to Ghanaian scholars working on the digital and green energy transitions. Scholars at both institutions have leading expertise in these topics, allowing for co-supervision that will also deepen our research collaborations. This has been possible through philanthropic support from the Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Foundation, which also helped fund the conference, but also strong support from SEED and our Doctoral Academy. Many thanks to all involved!
Finally, I’d also like to congratulate colleagues on their success in attracting 8 (eight!) postdoctoral research fellows to GDI for the next three years, six on Hallsworth Fellowships and two via the Bicentenary Fellowships scheme. It’s a great signal that the current generation of early career researchers see GDI as a leading destination for them to receive high-quality mentoring and build their careers. Long may this continue!