Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice, 2026-2027
The Cutting Edge Issues in Development series is back, and this year we have another fantastic line up of guest speakers from around the world working in the field of International Development.
The new academic term has just started, and this means we are back with our exciting lecture series ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’! This visiting lecture series, which is hosted by the International Development Department, provides students and guests with invaluable insights into the practical world of international development.
This year, we move the series back to in-person for our students and staff, but we will continue to offer our online audience the chance to watch the lectures back via our YouTube channel, listen via the podcast series and read student reflections on our blog.
The series is convened by Dr Myfanwy James.
View the full schedule below (Alternate Fridays from 4.00pm - 6.00pm)
| Week/Date | Speaker + Discussant | Title |
| Week 1: 2 October | Speaker: Sharifah Sekalala, Professor of Global Health Law at the School of Law and Director of the Centre for Global Health Law at the University of Warwick. She is currently a Visiting Professor at Witts University in South Africa and a Co-Director of University of Toronto/Warwick Global Health and Human Rights Training Program. She is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is at the intersection of international law, public policy and global health. Professor Sekalala is currently leading and co-leading various funded projects including: Wellcome-Trust-funded project on digital health apps in Sub-Saharan Africa, After the end: Lived experiences and aftermaths of diseases, disasters and drugs in global health and an ESRC funded project on Advancing health data justice: A comparative study of health-related data governance in Canada, Germany and the UK. Professor Sekalala is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FaSS) and an Honorary Member of the UK Faculty of Public Health. She has consulted on human rights and health in many developing countries and international organisations such as UNAIDS, the WHO and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). ......................................... Discussant: Sonali Silva, PhD candidate at LSE. | On the role of Law in African health data futures |
| Week 3: 16 October | Speaker: Ruben Andersson, Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford University's Department of International Development. Ruben is an anthropologist working on migration, borders and security with a focus on the West African Sahel and southern Europe. ......................................... Discussant: David Keen, Professor in International Development and Conflict Studies. | Age of Security: The rise of a global obsession |
| Week 5: 30 October | Speaker: Patricia Owens, FBA is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Somerville College. She is author or editor of six books and the recipient of eleven best book and article awards. She currently holds a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. ......................................... Discussant: Aoife McCullough, PhD candidate at LSE and Associate Researcher at ODI. | Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men |
| Week 7: 13 November | Speaker: Anastasia Nesvetailova, Director of the Macroeconomic and Development Policies Branch of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva. There, she leads the team responsible for the flagship Trade and Development Report.Before joining UNCTAD Anastasia has been a Professor of International Political Economy at City, University of London, and held visiting fellowships at the University of California, the Levy Institute of Bard College, the Danish Institute of International Studies and CERIS-ULB School in Brussels.Anastasia’s main research has focused on the political economy of finance. She has published widely on issues of financial instability, financial innovation and regulation, including three monographs (Fragile Finance: Debt, Speculation and Crisis in the Age of Global Credit , 2007; Financial Alchemy in Crisis: The End of Liquidity Illusion, 2010; and Sabotage: The Business of Finance, 2020, with R. Palan), as well as numerous academic and policy articles on the global financial system. ......................................... Discussant: Sichen Li, Assistant Professor in International Relations Chair: Robert Wade, Professor of Political Economy and Development | The Geoeconomics of Development: The Race to Shape the Future |
| Week 9: 27 November | Speaker: Ashwini Deshpande, is Professor of Economics and the Founding Director of Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) at Ashoka University, India. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She has published extensively in leading scholarly journals. She is the author of “Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India”, Oxford University Press, and “Affirmative Action in India”, Oxford India Short Introductions, series, 2013. She has edited several volumes, the latest of which are "The Indian Economy: Navigating a Global Turning Point" (with Kaushik Basu, Sonalde Desai and Nirvikar Singh, Simon and Schuster, 2026), and “Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action” (Springer Major Reference Works, 2023). She is a Fellow of the International Economic Association. She received the EXIM Bank award for outstanding dissertation (now called the IERA Award) in 1994, the 2007 VKRV Rao Award for Indian economists under 45 and SKOCH Award for Gender Economics in 2022. ......................................... Discussant: Niharika Singh, Assistant Professor in International Development | The West Was There Too, And Hasn't Entirely Left: Gender Norms and Economic Change in Global History |
For any questions related to the event series, please email intdev.comms@lse.ac.uk.