STEPS Centre

Transformations to Sustainability programme workshop
2018-09-21 08:00 - 2018-09-24 17:00 (Europe/London) | Fukuoka, Japan
Researchers from two STEPS-related projects will attend this workshop, which brings together the projects of the Transformations to Sustainability (T2S) programme.

The Pathways Network, now in its final year, will share findings and insights from its series of ‘Transformation Labs’ around the world.
The TAPESTRY project, which began in 2018, explores how transformation may arise ‘from below’ in marginal environments with high levels of uncertainty.

Transforming Power Relations: Insights from the Transformations to Sustainability programme
2018-09-25 14:20 - 16:20 | Fukuoka, Japan
A panel session at the World Social Science Forum 2018 in Fukuoka, Japan, which includes contributions from the Pathways Network.

Pathways to Sustainability - Understanding Sustainability Challenges and Key Research Needs
2018-10-10
Nairobi, Kenya
This event, hosted by the Africa Sustainability Hub, explored sustainable development challenges and priorities for the African continent. Topics include the role of research and partnerships, what research is needed, priority funding areas and opportunities for Africa.

Media coverage of the event
Video coverage

NTV, Kenya – YouTube
Capital FM news – YouTube
Brandplus TV Kenya – YouTube

Other online coverage
Anchor Big Four agenda on research to avoid guesswork – experts
Joseph Muraya, Capital FM, 10 October 2018 (full article)
Boost universities’ research capacity, experts tell State
Mark Oloo, The Standard, 14 October 2018
Social media

What are Africa's biggest sustainability challenges and key research needs? This morning in Nairobi we're discussing science, innovation, partnerships and funding, at a workshop hosted by @ASH_Excellence https://t.co/trVv5X9sIF#AfricaSusDev
— STEPS Centre (@stepscentre) October 10, 2018

View all tweets with the hashtag #AfricaSusDev.

Event details
Invited speakers included:

Dr Joanes Atela, Africa Sustainability Hub / ACTS
Prof Shem Wandiga, Chancellor, Egerton University
Prof Hamadi Boga, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture
Dr Ochieng Odero, DFID EA Research Fund
Dr Richard Munang, UN Environment Africa
Dr Eng Ahmed Hamdy, African Union
Dr Grace Mwaura, African Academy of Sciences
Dr Roy Mugiira, National Commission of Science, Technology & Innovation
Dr Kaburu Ciugu, African Academy of Sciences
Prof David Ockwell, STEPS Centre/University of Sussex
Prof Madara Ogot, University of Nairobi
Dr Michele Leone, IDRC
Dr Roselida Owuor, National Research Fund
Prof Izael Da Silva, Strathmore University
Dr Adrian Ely, STEPS Centre/SPRU, University of Sussex
Prof Andrew Stirling, STEPS Centre/SPRU, University of Sussex
Dr Anabel Marin, CENIT, Argentina
Prof Ritu Priya, JNU, India
Dr Yang Lichao, BNU, China
Prof Hallie Eakin, Arizona State University

The event also shares findings of the STEPS Global Consortium’s Pathways Network, which has explored the use of social innovation methods to address socio-ecological challenges in six sites around the world.
The publication T-Labs: A Practical Guide, which shares methods and case stories from the network, will be launched at this event.
The event, hosted by the Africa Sustainability Hub, is aimed at policy-makers, funders and development practitioners, and will involve an international group of participants, including members of the STEPS global consortium.
For more details contact F.Imbali@acts-net.org.

'A New Politics From The Left' - Book launch seminar with Hilary Wainwright
2018-10-31 13:00 - 14:30 | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom
31 October 2018 at 1.00 – 2.30pm
Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, UK
Chaired by John Gaventa, IDS
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAOpMurI510[/embedyt]
Millions of people passionately desire a viable alternative to austerity, authoritarianism and fear. They reject both corporate capitalism and an elite political system over which they have no control, but they are sceptical of the traditional weapons of the left: seizing state power and devising top-down solutions. They are inventing a new politics based on principles of participatory democracy, cooperation and self-government.
In this urgent and original polemic, activist and academic Hilary Wainwright shows that this new politics must start from sharing the tacit knowledge and creativity of each individual.
Power should not be exercised as domination, the imposition of paternalistic rule by well-meaning experts, but as a collaborative exercise in nurturing and asserting the transformative capacity of the many.
Hilary Wainwright is an academic and radical activist who co-edits the magazine Red Pepper and is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI).
This event is part of the STEPS Centre’s Transformations series.

Transformations: our theme for 2018
Faced with a series of social and environmental stresses and shocks, there are urgent calls for radical, systemic change. But, as past and present experience show, this can take many forms. What does it take to make sustainability transformations emancipatory (caring), rather than repressive (controlling)?
Find out more about our theme for 2018 on our Transformations theme page.

Decolonial Transformations: Imagining, Practising, Collaborating
2018-10-31 13:00 - 2018-11-02 18:30
This event, arising from a collaboration between the University of Sussex and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), aims to create a space for conversations and collaborations around the theme of Decolonial Transformations.
Venue: University of Sussex, Falmer campus
Register: Prior registration is necessary to attend.
Event description:
This workshop provides a space for conversations and collaborations around the theme of ‘Decolonial Transformations’. The world we currently inhabit has been structured significantly by imperial and colonial rule. While colonization was resisted over the longer durée, the decolonization movements of the last seventy years consolidated and institutionalised these efforts. This has led to the beginning of a fracturing of the colonial world order. This fracturing remains incomplete.
Coloniality continues to be pervasive as a structuring force in the world, often manifesting as the modernist control of nature and civil society, racialised divisions of labour, Eurocentric social theories, global governance regimes that institutionalise asymmetric relations (in trade, natural resources and capital), racialised migration regimes, disqualification of ‘non-Western’ modes of knowing, demonization of specific identities and xenophobia, and the silencing and erasure of subaltern histories. While struggling against these forms of coloniality, there is an urgent need for imagining and realising transformations that can help build alternate decolonial worlds and sustainable futures.
A key aim of the workshop is to think about and discuss how to move recent conversations around coloniality and decolonial transformations forward, linking academic scholarship with art, activism, and everyday life. This workshop brings together scholars, artists, students and activists to collaboratively imagine and reflect upon decolonial processes. It aims to further cooperative engagement in and among movements aimed at decolonial transformations, for realising educational justice, ecological regeneration and pluriversal futures.
The workshop will include a variety of different events and forums over two and a half days, including panel discussions, interviews, interactive and participatory workshops, and creative spaces and performances. The afternoon workshops will be streamed to bring together work in Scholarship, Art, and Activism.
This workshop is a collaboration between SOAS and the University of Sussex. We welcome you to join us in 3 days of conversations and collaborations on ‘decolonial transformations’.

Links

Event website
Detailed programme

Discussion: Transformations to Sustainability
2018-11-01 15:00 - 17:00 | Room 115, Jubilee Building, University of Sussex
This event will discuss transdisciplinary methods, global collaborations and the politics of transformative action for sustainability, drawing on experiences from around the University of Sussex campus. Through making meaningful connections between a variety of areas and projects, we aim to understand the strengths of Sussex work on transformative change and identify opportunities to build on them. This afternoon meeting presents the opportunity for Sussex and IDS colleagues and invited guests to discuss the following:

The notion of ‘transformations’ (to sustainability) and the analytical contribution that different kinds of researchers can play in understanding them
The potential political role that inter/transdisciplinary research can play in contributing to transformations and how this varies across different disciplines, cultures and contexts
Challenges of international collaborative research of the kind practiced by the STEPS Centre and others on campus, and currently supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund.

Invited contributors from schools across campus will reflect on their own work and offer insights from different disciplinary and institutional perspectives.
STEPS colleagues will introduce the work that has been carried out under the Pathways Network in the context of the first year of the ESRC transition funding (2018), in which we have adopted ‘Transformations’ as the thematic focus of our work. Adrian Ely will report on the network’s research on transformations around food and agriculture, water and sanitation and energy and climate.
Confirmed speakers:
Andy Stirling (SPRU, STEPS Centre)
Adrian Ely (SPRU, STEPS Centre)
Melissa Leach (IDS)
Joseph Alcamo (Geography, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme)
Catherine Will (Sociology, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, Sussex European Institute)
Rajith Lakshman (Health and Nutrition Cluster, IDS)
This event is part of the ESRC STEPS Centre’s programme for 2018, focusing on the theme of ‘Transformations’.

Faced with a series of social and environmental stresses and shocks, there are urgent calls for radical, systemic change. But, as past and present experience show, this can take many forms. What does it take to make sustainability transformations emancipatory (caring), rather than repressive (controlling)?
Find out more about our theme for 2018 on our Transformations theme page.

Argentine Congress of Open and Citizen Science (CIACIAR)
2018-11-02
CIACIAR (Congreso de Ciencia Abierta y Ciudadana en Argentina) was a one-day congress held at the University of San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The event was convened by CENIT and Cientópolis, and sponsored by STEPS Latin America.
The event was attended by more than 200 people among researchers, scientists, disseminators of science and technology, and university students from Buenos Aires, La Plata, Rosario, Córdoba, Río Cuarto and Mendoza.
Blog: The challenges of open science by Muriel Tosi, 7 November 2018

More information
The CIACIAR event website (in Spanish) has full details of the event, including programme details.
View the event website

Dalit women’s narratives of the Green Revolution in rural South India
2018-11-06 13:00 - 14:30 | Room 119, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Room 119, Institute of Development Studies
Library Road, Falmer
BN1 9RE, UK
Speakers:

Divya Sharma (Research Fellow, SPRU)
Saurabh Arora (Senior Lecturer, SPRU)

Since the 1960s, the dominant narratives of the Green Revolution (GR) in India have focussed on state-led agricultural intensification through groundwater extraction, hybrid varieties of rice, synthetic agrochemicals and mechanisation. These narratives have also centred on mapping impact in terms of yield productivity, incomes, or inequalities across regions, class and caste. Historically marginalised and oppressed Dalit cultivators and workers enter these narratives as beneficiaries of the rising demand for labour, an increase in wages, and availability of work in the expanding non-farm economy. In critical narratives of the GR, they are victims of pesticide poisoning, de-skilling, and caste-based discrimination.
We offer an alternative set of narratives, based on life histories of two Dalit women in Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu. Employing intersectionality, we explore how gender, class and caste together shape non-linear trajectories of poverty and well-being. The ways in which the women articulate memories of critical events show how they actively shaped agrarian and rural transformations, and how they relate to changing ecologies, including depleting groundwater, variable rainfall patterns and eroding village commons.
These intersectional narratives, absent from dominant and critical histories of the GR, foreground everyday politics around socio-material practices of farm work and care. Challenging the dominant techno-centric narratives, they draw our attention to marginal cultivation and food practices, changing relations with land, negotiation of labouring arrangements, as well as changing conceptions of risk. We argue that such narratives are crucial for moving beyond policies and politics of engaging with the ongoing agrarian crisis in India, which remain centred on landowning farmers.
This research is part of the ESRC-DFID project Relational Pathways: Mapping Agency and Poverty Dynamics through Green Revolutions that aims to understand the pathways in and out of poverty for farmers and workers in Kenya and India constituted by changing technologies, natural resources and social worlds.

Can pastoralists help us to respond to global uncertainties?
2018-11-21 15:30 - 17:30 | College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China
Seminar by Ian Scoones, ESRC STEPS Centre director, at the College of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Peking University
Uncertainties are everywhere: climate change, financial crises, migration flows, infrastructure development, disease outbreaks and more. Pastoralists – people living largely from livestock in dryland, montane and Mediterranean regions – have long experience of responding to intersecting uncertainties. Perceptions, cultures and practices; markets and economic relations; and institutional arrangements and governance systems have co-evolved with environmental, economic and political uncertainties. Can we learn from these experiences for other contexts, such as financial systems, disease outbreak response, migration policy and critical infrastructure management, where the challenges of responding to uncertainty are real, and growing?
This event is related to the PASTRES project.

Understanding Uncertainty and Climate Change: Views from India
2018-11-29 12:30 - 14:00 | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
**THE DATE OF THIS EVENT HAS CHANGED**
Seminar with Lyla Mehta, Shilpi Srivastava and Lars Otto Naess
Research Fellows, IDS
The scale and impacts of climate change remain deeply uncertain. This is particularly true at the local level, where climate related uncertainties combined with accelerated growth trajectories often exacerbate social and political inequities and the vulnerabilities of marginalised communities. Policy makers and scientists tend to draw on quantitative assessments, models and scenario building to understand and capture uncertainty, often disconnected from how local people – particularly those living at the margins – make sense of and cope with uncertainty.
This seminar will discuss findings from an ongoing project in three sites in India (Kutch, Sundarbans and Mumbai), funded by the Research Council of Norway, focusing on how uncertainty is understood and experienced from ‘below’ by the lived experiences of local people, how it is conceptualised and represented from ‘above’ by climate scientists and experts and how the ‘middle’ – civil society, NGOs, academics – can potentially function as brokers between the ‘below’ and ‘above’.

This seminar relates to the ongoing project on Climate change, uncertainty and transformation hosted by NMBU (Norway), which builds on the earlier STEPS Centre project Uncertainty From Below.
The event is part of the Climate and Development seminar series convened by the Institute of Development Studies.

STEPS Seminar - Bioleft: experimenting with an open source seed system in Latin America
2019-01-24 13:00 - 14:30 | Room 100, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Room 100, Institute of Development Studies
Brighton, UK
Everyone welcome
Speaker: Anabel Marin (CENIT/STEPS America Latina)
This seminar reports on work carried out in the STEPS America Latina hub as part of the ‘Pathways’ Transformative Knowledge Network.
In her talk, Anabel Marin will outline the sustainability challenges facing Argentinean agriculture and describe the processes of research, engagement and innovation that have contributed to the development of Bioleft, an open and collaborative system for seed innovation.
Video

About the speaker
Anabel Marin is a researcher specialising in innovation and development. Her initial training is in economics and she has a master’s degree in development and a PhD in science and technology policy studies (Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex). Between 2007 and 2008 she worked as a Research Fellow at SPRU. Since 2010, she has been a researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina. She also leads several research projects in Latin America about sustainability in agriculture and the future of seeds. She is a member of the STEPS America Latina hub and co-lead of the Pathways Transformative Knowledge Network.
The seminar is hosted/chaired by Adrian Ely (SPRU/STEPS Centre)

Relevant links:

Bioleft – official website
Pathways Network
STEPS America Latina

Agency and social-ecological system (SES) pathways: The Transformation Lab in the Xochimilco SES
2019-02-11 13:00 - 14:30 | Room 101, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton
Room 101, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK
13:00 – 14:30
Speaker: Mario Siqueiros-García (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/STEPS North America hub).
All welcome

Slides

Agency and social-ecological system (SES) pathways: the Transformation Lab in the Xochimilco SES from STEPS Centre

About the seminar
Xochimilco is a wetland in the southern part of Mexico City. It is part of a system of lakes in the basin of Mexico and has been used for agriculture for centuries. Xochimilco once fed the Aztecs, and is still very productive today. However, now the area is under great urban pressure and degradation. The Xochimilcas (local farmers and residents) have a strong attachment to this land, and a long history associated with it. The degradation of the wetland, as well as the changes in the use of land, are setting a trajectory that is rapidly evolving and is not sustainable. In this context, those who are concerned for the future of the Xochimilco social-ecological system bear a sense of loss and despair.
For two years, J. Mario Siqueiros-García, as part of the STEPS North America hub, worked with local farmers, residents from irregular urban settlements, and academics in a Transformation Laboratory (T-Lab), as part of the Pathways Network. The project aimed to re-frame and identify novel ways for promoting individual agency and understandings of the Xochimilco social-ecological system, and provide a space for exploring the conditions that foster collective agency. Drawing on the learnings from this T-Lab experience, this seminar will explore more deeply the connection between the concept of agency and the Xochimilco landscape as a social-ecological system. Mario will argue in favour of a process ontology that seems to correspond with the pathways approach, in which agency and the social-ecological system as a unit, play a central role.
About the speaker
Mario Siqueiros-García is an Ethnologist with a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology, an Advanced Studies Diploma and a PhD degree in the Philosophy of Biology. From 2011 to 2014, he worked at the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI) of Genomics Department of the National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN) in Mexico City. Since 2014, he has been working as a Research Associate in the Department of Mathematical Modeling of Social Systems at the Institute for Applied Mathematics and Systems Research (IIMAS) of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). From a complex systems perspective, Mario is interested in the philosophical and theoretical understanding of the relationship between culture.

Peter Newell: 'Climate and development: A tale of two crises' (Sussex Development Lectures)
2019-03-14 17:00 - 18:30 | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Lecture by Prof Peter Newell (School of Global Studies, University of Sussex). Peter Newell is a member of the STEPS Centre and a founding member of the Rapid Transition Alliance.
This lecture is one of the Sussex Development Lectures. The theme of the current series (2018/19) is Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals – Synergies and Tensions.
The lecture will be recorded and livestreamed. See the IDS website for more information.

STEPS Seminar: Mathilde Gingembre - Bringing moral economy into the study of land deals: reflections from Madagascar
2019-03-19 13:00 - 14:30 | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Seminar organised by the Resource Politics and Rural Futures Clusters, in association with the STEPS Centre’s PASTRES project
Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies
Slides
View the slides from this talk (Slidehare)
Video
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qC0YlUR3Rg[/embedyt]

This seminar discusses the concept of moral economy as a critical lens to understand responses to corporate land access within agrarian economies. Drawing on ethnographic work in an agropastoral area of southern Madagascar, the presentation will highlight how villagers’ perceptions of land deals as well as their decisions to express, or suppress, their voices in land deal negotiations are closely tied to considerations of relational justice.
Consultation processes for corporate land access within agrarian economies are the sites of multiple contentions, many of which divide the “local communities” themselves. Local people do not only disagree over which struggle to engage with (struggle against dispossession, struggle for incorporation), but also over the issue of who has rights to the land. In contexts where land tenure is characterised by flexibility and where land claims overlap and collide – as in rural Madagascar– choices as to who to involve locally in discussions over land transfers are sensitive and political. Beyond these tensions, however, a strong consensus on the moral economic obligations of those benefiting (directly or indirectly) from corporate land access is observed. The seminar explores the resistance to the “de-moralising of land deals” that is expressed by local people, across social divides.
About the speaker
Mathilde Gingembre is an anthropologist who has worked in Madagascar on land deals for a number of years. She completed her PhD at IDS, Sussex on this topic. She is now based in Amman, Jordan and is an affiliate researcher with the ERC-funded PASTRES project.
Everyone Welcome!

Ian Scoones: 'The SDGs: A new politics of transformation?' (Sussex Development Lectures)
2019-03-28 17:00 - 18:30 | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Lecture by Prof Ian Scoones, STEPS Centre director.

This lecture is one of the Sussex Development Lectures. The theme of the current series (2018/19) is Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals – Synergies and Tensions.
About the lecture
The SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) potentially offer an inclusive, integrated approach to development, centred on social justice, for all of humanity. But how are they being implemented in practice? Too often a piece-meal, sectoral approach is adopted, rooted in modernist assumptions of linear transition and control. Drawing on the work of the ESRC STEPS Centre, this talk will offer a more radical vision of transformatory change, putting power and politics centre-stage. The talk will link the STEPS pathways approach with sustainable livelihoods perspectives to suggest a framework for thinking about and acting on transformations to sustainability for the SDGs. Drawing on examples from Argentina, Kenya, the UK and Zimbabwe, and differentiating structural, systemic and enabling perspectives on transformation, the talk will emphasise the need to foster a new politics for sustainability.
Ian Scoones is a professorial fellow at IDS, and is co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre. Over the last 30 years, he has worked on agrarian and environmental change, mostly in Africa. Through the work of the STEPS Centre since 2006, he has been involved in collaborative research on the politics of sustainability across the world.

The Future of the World is Mobile: What can we learn from pastoralists?
2019-04-10 16:30 - 18:00
European University Institute
Florence, Italy
Listen to this event

About this event
Can the experience of pastoralists, who have long relied on mobility, help us address the challenges of global migration, cross-border trade and managing flows of information and commodities?
Mobility is increasingly central to our societies. Nomadic practices and networks that enhance mobility are synonymous with a fluid, flexible, mobile modernity, which is governed through a continuous and growing flow of people, resources, information and capital. Yet our policy narratives and institutional settings are poorly equipped to tackle accelerating patterns of mobility, which in turn respond to and generate shifting patterns of uncertainties. A perspective on mobility from pastoralists’ perspectives challenges many ideas derived from a settled state perspective, dominated as they are by fixity, settlement, controlled migration, regulated movement, fences and borders. A mobility perspective therefore suggests new ways of thinking about policy and practice in a range of areas.
PASTRES, an ERC-funded project looking at pastoralism and uncertainty, believes that looking at the world through the eyes of pastoralists gives mobility the centrality it deserves. Pastoralism is a livelihood strategy based on the movements of animals and people, in search of greener pastures, expanding social networks and taking advantage of market opportunities. Pastoralists’ responses to environmental, market and governance uncertainties hinge on specific patterns of mobility. For many pastoralists, mobility across borders is vital, complex networks linking kin and others are at the core of market functioning, flexible movement in response to changing resource availability is essential for escaping drought, avoiding fixed places for settlement or markets is central to facilitating flexibility, and adaptive forms of governance are vital in pastoral societies.
Can we learn from pastoralists how mobility could help in responding to uncertainty for wider challenges? Perspectives from ‘marginal, peripheral’ contexts could provide important indications and inform debates around wider societal concerns. The seminar will provide the opportunity to link debates focused on pastoralism to wider discussions around movement and mobility in migration, trade and development, as part of a wider conversation about rethinking perspectives on uncertainty for contemporary global challenges.
Presentations:

PASTRES and the lens of pastoralists, Ian Scoones, IDS, University of Sussex & Visiting Fellow, Schuman Centre (view slides)
Interfacing pastoral movements and modern mobilities, Michele Nori (view slides)

Rabari on the road: Exploring the politics of pastoral mobility, Natasha Maru, IDS, University of Sussex (view slides)

Q&A and discussion

Moderator: Bernard Hoekman
Discussant: Giorgia Giovannetti (view slides)

STEPS Uncertainty series: Ilene Grabel - When Things Don't Fall Apart
2019-05-07 13:00 - 14:30 | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Ilene Grabel
Professor of International Finance
University of Denver

Free entry, all welcome
Watch video

About the lecture
In When Things Don’t Fall Apart, Ilene Grabel makes a simple but controversial claim, based on the work of the eminent social scientist Albert O. Hirschman. Grabel argues that as concerns global financial governance and development finance we are now in a period that she calls productive incoherence.
Unlike the Keynesian period of the middle 20th century and the neoliberal period that followed, the current conjuncture lacks an overarching theoretical framework to guide financial governance. In its absence, Grabel maps the proliferation of institutional innovation at the national, regional, and transregional levels. These experiments are grounded in a spirit of Hirschmanian pragmatism rather than Keynesian or neoclassical dogmatism. They are ad hoc, often limited in scope, and even inconsistent with each other. They are in that sense incoherent.
The book’s novel normative claim is that this incoherence is productive. It is allowing for new institutional and policy innovations that are contributing to a pluripolar financial governance architecture that is more robust and offers greater opportunities for problem solving and experimentation than the coherent architecture it is displacing.
Grabel substantiates these claims with empirically-rich case studies that explore the effects of recent crises on established and new networks of financial governance (such as the G-20); transformations within the IMF; institutional innovations in liquidity support and project finance from the national to the transregional levels; and the “rebranding” of capital controls. Grabel acknowledges, however, that the incoherent transformations underway also pose grave risks. She considers these risks in the concluding chapter of the book.

About the speaker
Ilene Grabel is Professor of International Finance and co-director of the graduate program in Global Finance, Trade, and Economic Integration at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver (USA).
She has published widely on financial policy and crises, developmental financial architectures, regional and transregional financial arrangements, international financial institutions and global financial governance, international capital flows and capital controls, international financial policies, currency boards and central banks in emerging market and developing countries, and remittances.
Her recent book, When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence (The MIT Press, 2017) was awarded the 2018 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize, and the 2019 International Studies Association International Political Economy Best Book Award.
More information can be found at Ilene Grabel’s website.

Uncertainty event series
This is part of a series of events on the STEPS Centre’s Uncertainty theme in 2019.
Uncertainties can make it hard to plan ahead. But recognising them can help to reveal new questions and choices. What kinds of uncertainty are there, why do they matter for sustainability, and what ideas, approaches and methods can help us to respond to them?
Find out more about our theme for 2019 on our Uncertainty theme page.

Matteo Caravani: Disciplinary Diversification in Karamoja: The Case of Charcoal
2019-05-09 13:00 - 14:30 | Room 221, IDS, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
PASTRES/STEPS Seminar with Matteo Caravani, Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR)
Room 221, Institute of Development Studies
All welcome

Following the Karamojong’s historical transition away from transhumant pastoralism – in what has been termed as the de-pastoralisation process – the regional economic reliance on off-farm activities has steadily increased. Colonial and post-colonial interventions have slowly deconstructed an old mode of production to “civilize” and “modernize” the Karamojong. The forceful change of modes of production, resulted in the current dominant diversification of livelihoods that is shaped by growing inequality and general proletarianisation. The internal responses to the crisis of social reproduction of labour – among which charcoal production features as essential – are again disciplined by the Ugandan government and development partners. These institutions support sedentary agriculture while criminalizing the local charcoal production for its alleged effects on environmental and land degradation, leading to deforestation and thus the weakening of communities’ resilience to future shocks and stresses.
However, while the Karamojong are officially blamed for deforestation due to charcoal burning, initial findings suggest that large-scale commercial producers in central Uganda are expanding their charcoal frontier to Northern Uganda and that these are indeed the key drivers of deforestation.
My paper argues that there is need to move away from a normative understanding of off-farm activities in Karamoja and to recognize the importance of charcoal production beyond the discourse of negative coping mechanisms. Simply criminalizing the Karamojong for burning and selling charcoal or impeding this livelihood through the rule of law will make the inhabitants of this region more destitute. Rather than banning charcoal, government and development partners should support its sustainable production.
About the speaker
Dr Matteo Caravani is a political economist lecturing on the agrarian question in modern history and the history of economic theory at the Makerere Institute for Social Research (MISR) in Uganda. He graduated from the faculty of Economics, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and he was awarded a PhD in Development Studies at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) University of Sussex, in Brighton.
Dr Caravani worked as an international consultant for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) both in Palestine and Rome, for the World Food Programme (WFP) in East Africa, for the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and for the Institute of Development Studies.
He is now an affiliate researcher on the PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience) project. Within PASTRES he focuses his work in deconstructing resilience. Particularly, he is interested in the relationship between existing social structures and power relations and the ways in which these structures and relations keep large portions of the population unable to be resilient to future shocks and stresses.

Contact: l.forgeaux@ids.ac.uk

STEPS Annual Lecture: Derek Wall - What would Elinor do (about climate change)?
2019-05-14 17:30 - 19:00 | Fulton Lecture Theatre A, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QT, United Kingdom
Fulton A Lecture Theatre
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton, UK
Watch video

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About the lecture

What would Elinor do (about climate change)?
Elinor Ostrom was the first and so far only woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics. Her innovative work on ecological economics challenged the notion of ‘the tragedy of the commons’.
Her political economy analysis, focusing on trust, cooperation, diversity, deep democracy and innovative methodology, provides a basis for considering climate change. In this lecture, Derek Wall will outline, develop and critique her approach, and discuss how it might inform diverse efforts to deal with the challenge of a warming world.

About The speaker

Derek Wall
Derek Wall teaches political economy at Goldsmiths College, London.
A former International Coordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales, his latest book is Hugo Blanco: A Revolutionary for Life (Merlin Press). Previous books have included Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals (Pluto Press) and Green History (Routledge).
He is currently writing a new title, Another Green World: The practical politics of climate change resistance.
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About the STEPS Annual Lectures
The STEPS Annual Lecture is the only public event of the STEPS Summer School on Pathways to Sustainability. It is attended by participants in the Summer School, and open to the general public, with free entry.
Past speakers include Achim Steiner, Mariana Mazzucato, Tim Jackson, Kate Raworth, Mike Hulme, Harriet Bulkeley and Michael Jacobs.
Browse recordings and slides from past Annual Lectures.

PASTRES seminar: Pastoralism in the Arabian Peninsula - Reflections on contemporary challenges and adaptations to land use rights
2019-06-11 13:00 - 14:30 | Room 100, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Room 100, Institute of Development Studies
Seminar with Dawn Chatty, co-hosted by the PASTRES project and the STEPS Centre
All welcome
Watch video
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK53HSwe5PM&width=700&height=525[/embedyt]
About the seminar
Nomadic pastoralism in the Arabian Peninsula has undergone significant change over the past 150 years as a response to alterations in its relationship with central authority. Efforts to settle and transform pastoralists into settled farmers – a key policy of Post WWI neo-colonial and later newly emerging nation states – has largely disappeared. Instead we see concentrated drives to label such communities as backward, economically irrational, and obsolete. More recently, a policy of ‘benign’ neglect has permitted pastoral communities in Arabia to adapt, resist and face new challenges from multinational extractive industry, global conservation organizations, and climate change.
About the speaker
Dawn Chatty is Emeritus Professor in Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She is also Fellow of the British Academy. Her research interests include: coping strategies and resilience of refugee youth; tribes and tribalism; nomadic pastoralism and conservation; gender and development; health, illness and culture.
She has edited numerous books, including Deterritorialized Youth: Sahrawi and Afghan Refugees at the Margins of the Middle East (Berghahn Books, 2010); Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Facing the 21st Century (Leiden, Brill, 2006); Children of Palestine: Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East (Berghahn Books, 2005); and Conservation and Mobile Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development (Berghahn Press, 2002).
Prof Chatty is the author of Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2010), From Camel to Truck (White Horse Press, 2013), and Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State (Hurst Publishers, 2018).
For queries about this event, email l.forgeaux@ids.ac.uk

Why embracing uncertainty means rethinking development
2019-06-14 14:00 - 16:00
Ester Boserup Prize Lecture
by Ian Scoones, ESRC STEPS Centre / PASTRES project
Watch video

Lecture details
A1-01.01 Festauditoriet
Bülowsvej 17, 1870 Frederiksberg C
Copenhagen
This lecture will draw on the European Research Council funded project, PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience: Global Lessons from the margins) and will link to the ESRC STEPS Centre’s uncertainty theme for 2019.
Details of the lecture and background on the Ester Boserup Prize are on the University of Copenhagen’s website.

Researching Pastoral Mobilities: Exploring Methods and Frameworks
2019-06-18 08:00 - 2019-06-21 17:00
18 – 21 June 2019
Friedensau University (Germany/Möckern)
The “Pastoral Mobilities: Exploring Frameworks and Methods” writing workshop responds to the need to revisit our methodological infrastructure, as researchers of mobile pastoralism, to align with broader advancements in the understating of pastoral livelihoods and their environments, as well as with the contemporary empirics of research with mobile pastoralists.
24 researchers and mentors will come together from the 18th to the 21st of June in Friedensau University (Germany/Möckern) to explore these shortcomings and possible solutions to this methodological quandary. We will be exchanging knowledge, discussing our case papers, building up a shared understanding of the problematics of the current methodological infrastructure and reflect on possible solutions. Alongside round table discussions and more standard presentations, we will be using interactive and alternative ways to discuss these issues in the hope of creating an open and dynamic space for reflection.
Bringing new views to the study of pastoral systems and their representations in policymaking and beyond, we will reflect on our language, units of analysis, geographical and spatial references, ethics, politics and power, tools and methods adopted, within broader research designs to better fit the contemporary empirics of researching with mobile people.
This initiative is connected with the PASTRES project.

The Politics of Uncertainty: Practical Challenges for Transformative Action
2019-07-03 15:30 - 2019-07-05 16:00 | Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
This international academic symposium, held at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK, explored the theme of uncertainty – the STEPS Centre’s theme for 2019.
Book | Blog series | Podcast | Video | Background info

Book
The Politics of Uncertainty: Challenges of Transformation (Routledge, July 2020) is an Open Access book which further explores the ideas discussed at the symposium.
The book features chapters by participants, and an introduction by the editors (and symposium convenors), Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling.
Read the book

Blog series
Participants in the symposium reflect on the event in a series of blog posts.

Uncertain futures and the politics of uncertainty Richard Bronk
Uncertain superlatives Emery Roe
When ignorance does more than you think Emery Roe
Solidarity, insurance, emotions and uncertainty Mark Fenton-O’Creevy
Whose risk? Whose responsibility? The politics and financialisation of uncertainty Nick Taylor
Embracing uncertainty: lessons from journeys and struggles Michele Nori, Rose Cairns and Nathan Oxley
Infrastructures of the imagination: uncertainty and the politics of prefiguration Martin Mahony and Silke Beck
Envisioning the future in the present: making sense of uncertainty Detlef Müller-Mahn
How can NGOs feel at home with uncertainty? Irene Guijt

View the series

Podcast
The STEPS Uncertainty Podcast is a series of four conversations recorded with participants after the symposium, available as a podcast to stream or download.
View/subscribe on iTunes
Episode #1: Finance & banking / insurance / governance

With Leon Wansleben (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies), Leigh Johnson (University of Oregon), Bernardo Rangoni (European University Institute), Ian Scoones (STEPS Centre)

Episode #2: Uncertainty in critical infrastructures / reliability / technology & innovation

With Patrick van Zwanenberg (CENIT, Argentina), Emery Roe (University of California, Berkeley), Andy Stirling (STEPS Centre)

Episode #3: Disease outbreaks / climate change / disasters

With Melissa Leach (Institute of Development Studies), Lyla Mehta (Institute of Development Studies), Mark Pelling (King’s College London), Marina Apgar (STEPS Centre)

Episode #4: Security & terrorism / migration
With Gabe Mythen (University of Liverpool), Dorte Thorsen (University of Sussex), Rose Cairns (STEPS Centre)

Video
Watch a playlist of all videos from the symposium.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/embed?listType=playlist&list=PLI8qkz1i11OQNKD34R5WJzu8bhYUuoa24[/embedyt]

Video clips
Watch selected clips from the symposium at the links below.
Panel contributions: ‘What is uncertainty, and why does it matter?’
Silvio Funtowicz: What is uncertainty, and why does it matter?
Sheila Jasanoff: What is uncertainty, and why does it matter?
Dipak Gyawali: What is uncertainty, and why does it matter?
Panel contributions: ‘What happened to the Risk Society?’
Gabe Mythen: What happened to the Risk Society?
Joy Zhang: What happened to the Risk Society?
Dean Curran: What happened to the Risk Society?
Video of full sessions
What is uncertainty, and why does it matter? (panel + Q&A – 93 min)
What happened to the Risk Society? (panel + Q&A – 96 min)
Final discussion: fishbowl (reflections on the conference – 76 min)

About the symposium
Thinking across diverse domains – from finance, to climate, to migration, to disease, to innovation, to infrastructure, to security – this symposium will explore the diverse ways incertitude is understood and responded to (or not).
By catalysing and developing richer and more nuanced understandings of incertitude, the symposium aims to help enable more robust actions, strategies and governance for these uncertain times.
For updates, please subscribe to the STEPS Centre newsletter.

For more images from the event, see the photo gallery on Flickr.
Speakers
Plenary speakers include

Dean Curran, University of Calgary
Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard Kennedy School
Silvio Funtowicz, University of Bergen
Gabe Mythen, University of Liverpool
Dipak Gyawali, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology
Brian Wynne, Emeritus Professor, University of Lancaster
Joy Zhang, University of Kent
Silke Beck, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
Melissa Leach, Institute of Development Studies
Lyla Mehta, Institute of Development Studies

Programme
3 July
15:00 Registration opens
16:00 PLENARY 1: What is uncertainty, and why does it matter? Sheila Jasanoff, Silvio Funtowicz, Dipak Gyawali
18:00 Refreshments + publication ‘speed launches’
19:00 Dinner
4 July
9:00 CLUSTER SESSION (parallel session, each cluster meets in different rooms) – presentations from first two themes
11:00 Tea & coffee
11:30 CLUSTER SESSION – presentations from third theme
12:30 Lunch
14:00 CLUSTER SESSION – cross-theme discussion: How is uncertainty understood? New directions and challenges
15:30 Tea & coffee
16:00 PLENARY 2: What happened to the risk society: multiple modernities and a new politics of uncertainty? Joy Zhang, Brian Wynne, Dean Curran, Gabe Mythen
18:00 Dinner & drinks
5 July
9:00 CLUSTER SESSION – Synthesis: What have we learned? Big questions and challenges
11:00 Tea & coffee
11:30 Feedback from clusters, summaries, reflections
13:30 Lunch
14:30 PLENARY 3: Uncertainty and transformations, challenges for science, policy and politics Lyla Mehta, Silke Beck, Melissa Leach (+ reflections in ‘fishbowl’ format)
16:00 Tea & coffee, departures

themes and clusters
The symposium is organised into four Clusters. Each Cluster includes three themes, convened by a researcher (the Theme Convenor) with expertise on that theme.
In each theme, participants have been invited by the Theme Convenor to give presentations. The document below gives abstracts for all 12 of the themes.
Download the theme abstracts (PDF)
– –
Cluster 1

Finance and banking (Leon Wansleben, Max Plank Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, and Timo Walter, University of Erfurt)
Insurance and liability (Leigh Johnson, University of Oregon)
Experimental, nodal, adaptive governance (Bernardo Rangoni, European University Institute, Florence)

Download abstracts from Cluster 1 (PDF)
– –
Cluster 2

Technology policy, regulation and precaution (Patrick van Zwanenberg, CENIT, Argentina)
Critical infrastructures and reliability (Emery Roe, UC Berkeley)
Expanding cities (James Evans, University of Manchester)

Download Abstracts from Cluster 2 (PDF)
– –
Cluster 3

Climate change models and response (Lyla Mehta and Shilpi Srivastava, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex)
Disease outbreaks and preparedness (Melissa Leach and Hayley MacGregor, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex)
Disasters, humanitarianism and emergencies (Mark Pelling, King’s College London)

Download abstracts from Cluster 3 (PDF)
– –
Cluster 4

Migration and mobility (Dorte Thorsen, University of Sussex)
Conflict, security, terrorism and crime (Gabe Mythen, University of Liverpool)
Culture, religion and perception (Rose Cairns, SPRU, University of Sussex)

Download abstracts from cluster 4 (PDF)

Background
This event is part of the STEPS Centre’s 2019 theme on Uncertainty.
Thinking across diverse domains – from finance, to climate, to migration, to disease, to innovation, to infrastructure, to security – this symposium will explore the diverse ways incertitude is understood and responded to (or not).
By catalysing and developing richer and more nuanced understandings of incertitude, the symposium aims to help enable more robust actions, strategies and governance for these uncertain times. In the ‘real world’ of policy and business, the full depth and breadth of challenges presented by the unknown are rarely fully acknowledged – and virtually never embraced. But this does not stop them being a familiar aspect of the worlds of Nature, politics and everyday life.
Diverse framings, degrees and contexts of ‘incertitude’ can be far more intractable and politically entangled than suggested by a technical language of ‘uncertainty’ or the reassuring methods around ‘risk’.
When unfathomed dimensions and possibilities of ignorance are treated as neatly parameterised ‘uncertainty’, then the resulting decisions can be seriously jeopardised by what has been excluded. When expectations are further closed down by the seductive aggregations of ’risk’ then the vulnerabilities are even more severe. There is no technical specialism so narrow that diverse equally expert views will not disagree, generating pervasive ‘ambiguity’.
But highlighting these wilder and more unruly forms of incertitude is not just a counsel of fear. These conventional blinkers on the imagination can also obscure many positive hopes and possibilities. Surprises, after all, can be good as well as bad. Pervading economies, societies, environments and technologies, the implications can be appreciated across a wide range of political cultures.
Thinking across diverse domains – from finance, to climate, to migration, to disease, to innovation, to infrastructure, to security – this symposium will explore the diverse ways incertitude is understood and responded to (or not). The aim is to catalyse and develop richer and more nuanced understandings of incertitude and so help enable more robust actions, strategies and governance.
In particular, the implications will be examined of complementing existing narrow ‘control-driven’, managerialist frameworks, with complementary ‘care-oriented’ approaches, that are more open, adaptive and responsive. Drawing on concepts and experiences from diverse disciplines and fields of practice, attention will span implications equally for individual behaviours and organisational strategies, as well as societal responses – with the politics of knowledge central throughout.

This symposium is the main event in the STEPS Centre’s Uncertainty theme in 2019.
Uncertainties can make it hard to plan ahead. But recognising them can help to reveal new questions and choices. What kinds of uncertainty are there, why do they matter for sustainability, and what ideas, approaches and methods can help us to respond to them?
Find out more about our theme for 2019 on our Uncertainty theme page.

Transformation Laboratories as spaces for co-designing social-ecological transformation: learning from different contexts and approaches
2019-10-15 08:30 - 18:00
This event is part of the TransAction Pre-Conference Workshops at Transformations 2019 in Santiago, Chile.
Experimental spaces for supporting collective processes of deliberation and learning about sustainability challenges, and testing possible solutions, are of increasing interest. An example of these are T-Labs (‘transformation laboratories’), which are highly facilitated, multi-stakeholder spaces of interaction and dialogue aimed at co-creating new visions and
practices for social-ecological sustainability in specific settings.
Three projects from the Transformations to Sustainability programme, T-Learning, Pathways and ACKnowl-EJ, have experimented with and reframed T-Labs, enriching our understanding of transformation itself, and of specific, complex social-ecological systems and their challenges in a wide range of contexts. This TransAction Workshop will bring together a wide range of participants to engage in dialogue, exchange of experience and exploration of the T-Lab framework, and to critically assess its potential to support processes of socialecological transformation. The framework and its methods will be applied to two cases related to extractive sectors in Latin America. The first case is mining, drawing on the knowledge of the new T2S project Gold Matters. The second case is agriculture, building upon Pathways experience. The use of T-Lab processes has great potential for exploring the role of extractive sectors in enabling and advancing transformations to sustainability in Latin America.
The workshop will propose tools not only to academics but also to policy makers, practitioners, activists and everyone who is interested in designing multi-stakeholder spaces of transformation in the context of sustainability challenges in general and in extractive sectors such as mining and agriculture in particular. The workshop will be carried out in Spanish. In the case that some participants do not speak Spanish, it is expected that translation will be collaborative, with the aid of participants both from the T2S projects and external attendants.

Cost: 50 USD
Registration is mandatory. To find our how to register, click here.
For more information on the workshop, click here.

Negotiating Epistemological Frameworks and Normative Commitments Across a Transformative Knowledge Network
2019-10-16 10:30 - 2019-10-17 12:00
This is a session organised by the Pathways network for the Transformations 2019 conference in Sanitago, Chile. The session has two parts.
Part 1, in the FAU Auditorium, will be on Wednesday 16 October, 11:10 – 12:45 (GMT-3)
1. Introduction. (Adrian Ely)
2. Reflections on Theory, Methods and Action – The Role(s) of Researchers in Transformations to Sustainability. (Adrian Ely)
3. Bioleft: A Story of Emerging Change First Led by Academics but Now Co-Owned by a Complex Network of Actors. (Anabel Marin, Patrick Van Zwanenberg, Almendra Cremaschi)
4. Mobilized Publics, Contradictory Interests and Divergent Imaginations: CoProducing Knowledge and Practices for Sustainable Urban Water Management in Gurgaon, India. (Pravin Kumar Kushwaha, Dinesh Abrol, Bikramaditya Chaudhary, Prachi Jha)
Part 2, in room 2002, Torre 15, will be on Thursday 17 October, 10:30-12:00 (GMT-3)
1. Introduction. (Laura Pereira)
2. Co-Producing Research and Action for Transformations to Sustainability in Argentina: Can Empowering Logics Also Be Instrumental? (Patrick Van Zwanenberg, Anabel Marin, Almendra Cremaschi)
3. Exploring Collective Agency for Sustainability Transformations: A
Transdisciplinary Process in the Xochimilco Social-Ecological System T-Lab. (Lakshmi Charli-Joseph, Hallie Eakin, J. Mario Siqueiros-García, Beatriz Ruizpalacios, David Manuel-Navarrete, Rebecca Shelton)
4. Understanding the Sustainable Development Prospects of Mobile-Enabled Solar Home Systems in Kenya. (Victoria Chengo)
5. Social Impact of Environmental Policies and Economic Green Transitions in China – A Case Study of Hebei. (Lichao Yang)
For more information, see the conference programme.

Relational and Psychological Dimensions of Agency
2019-10-16 11:10 - 12:45
This is a session organised with members of the STEPS Global Consortium for the Transformations 2019 conference in Sanitago, Chile.

The Relationship Between Social Capital and System Transformation. (Esther Carmen)
Procedural Fairness as an Enabler of Transformative Collaboration. (Gail Francis)
Loss and Change: Emotional Roots in Transformation and Collective Action. (Hallie Eakin, Rebecca Shelton, Lakshmi Charli-Joseph, Jesus Mario Siqueiros Garcia, David Manuel-Navarrete, Beatriz Ruizpalacios)
Sailing into Transformational Change: Making Safe Spaces for Leadership Development on Homeward Bound. (Deborah Anne O’Connell, Sophie Adams, Kylie Lewis, Fern Hames)
Seeds of Transformation: Change Strategies Towards More Sustainable Seed Systems. (Almendra Cremasachi, Anabel Marin, Patrick van Zwanenberg)

Exhibition: 'Hidden Paths'
2019-10-16 12:00 - 2019-10-20 18:00 | ONCA Gallery, 14 St George’s Place, Brighton, BN1 4GB, United Kingdom
ONCA Gallery
14 St George’s Place, Brighton, BN1 4GB, UK
12.00 – 18.00 daily
16-20 October 2019
Free entry, donations to gallery welcome
Global climate strikes are calling for ‘system change, not climate change’, but what does this mean? Extreme weather, automation, political instability, inequality: these crises are connected in deep and often invisible ways.
Hidden Paths welcomes us inside the troubled systems that we live in to see how they could be transformed. Through a series of artworks, this exhibition invites us to rethink our relationships with technology, nature and each other.
Visitors to Hidden Paths will navigate through 3 layers: Now, Change and Possible. From a sonic waterfall to sculptures, recipes, film and video, and an immersive VR experience, the artworks explore how we imagine the future, transformations in time, money and work, glimpses of new urban spaces, community ownership and the commons, and changed relationships to nature.
In a time of crises, the exhibition provides a reflective space to think differently about the present and the future – with cultures of care, collaboration and collective agency at its heart.
The Hidden Paths exhibition has been created by artists in the Brighton-based System Change Hive – emerging and established artists working with researchers, communications experts, VR technologists and local community groups, to reveal hidden paths to brighter, fairer and more sustainable futures.
Since February 2019, the Hive has been meeting regularly, including group discussions from researchers affiliated to the STEPS Centre, and others.
This event is part of the 2019 Brighton Digital Festival.

Applying Technologies of the Self in Transformation Labs to Mobilize Agency
2019-10-17 16:30 - 18:00
This is a presentation from members of the Pathways network as part of the Parallel T-Practice Sessions at the Transformations 2019 conference in Sanitago, Chile.
Presenters:
David Manuel-Navarrete
Lakshmi Charli-Joseph
Hallie Eakin
Mario Siqueiros García
Adrian Ely

Why embracing uncertainty means rethinking development and reimagining the future
2019-11-14 16:15 - 17:45
CRC Future Rural Africa Lecture Series
Universität Bonn, GIUB
Lecture by Ian Scoones, Institute of Development Studies/ESRC STEPS Centre/ERC PASTRES project
This talk makes the argument for putting uncertainty at the centre of thinking and practice in development. This means rejecting a linear, technocratic framing and embracing the implications of uncertainty for today’s complex, dynamic world. Through a number of examples – from the fields of banking, critical infrastructures and disease control – the elements of new thinking on uncertainty and development are explored.
The talk argues, however, that those who live with and from uncertainty day-to-day are best placed to innovate and help refashion development more broadly. Examples from pastoralism from around the world are offered to demonstrate the importance of learning from the margins. The talk concludes with a reflection on new directions for development that take uncertainty seriously and help refashion the way we imagine the future.

Time: 16:15 – 17:45 / Venue: Geographisches Institut der Universität Bonn, Meckenheimer Allee 166, Alfred-Philippson-Hörsaal, 53115 Bonn, Germany
For full information, visit the Future Rural Africa website.

[Postponed] STEPS Summer School 2020
2020-05-11 08:00 - 2020-05-22 17:00 | Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom
The ninth and final STEPS Summer School on Pathways to Sustainability was due to take place on 11-22 May 2020, but has been postponed until the following year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Participants will explore the theme of pathways to sustainability through a mixture of workshops, lectures, outdoor events and focused interaction with STEPS Centre members. The Summer School takes place on the University of Sussex campus, near Brighton, UK, where STEPS is co-hosted by the Institute of Development Studies and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU).
For more information, please visit the STEPS Summer School web page.
