On Babies and Bathwater: Decolonising International Development Studies

Given the decades-old decolonial and post-development critiques of the international development project, slating it as ultimately a deeply colonial enterprise. As a field of research, and also very much as a highly popular pedagogical project, how is it that International Development Studies is still a thing? The Institute of Development Studies hosts an evening talk on this challenging topic.

 

In this Sussex Development Lecture, Dr. Rutazibwa offers a conversation between personal experiences, reflections and decolonial scholarship to reflect on the fundamental, practical, institutional and epistemological implications of recognising the coloniality in the international development project. When we seek to part with the coloniality but not with the desire and imperative of global solidarity and justice, the following questions impose themselves: What do we keep? What do we throw out?

Dr Olivia U. Rutazibwa is a Belgo-Rwandan senior lecturer in European and International Development Studies at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. Her research centres around ways to decolonise thinking and practices of International Solidarity by recovering and reconnecting philosophies and enactments of dignity and self-determination in the postcolony: autonomous recovery in Somaliland, Agaciro in Rwanda and Black Power in the US.

 

For further information on this event, please see the dedicated webpage here.