Call for Papers: Gender, Media, and Developmentalism: A Networking and Methodological Workshop

Thursday 8 June 2023, 9:00am to 5:00pm
Venue: Campus – room tbc, Lancaster, United Kingdom
Open to: Postgraduates, Staff, Undergraduates
Registration: Free to attend – registration required
Registration info: Please e-mail Dr. Dalila Missero (d.missero@lancaster.ac.uk) if you wish to attend this event

Event Details

Call for Papers: Gender, Media, and Developmentalism: A Networking and Methodological Workshop 

8 June 2023, Lancaster University, Lancaster UK

Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2023

The workshop aims to explore the role of media and gender in developmentalism, an ideological framework that became dominant between the 1950s and the 1990s to conceptualise, discuss, and tackle global inequality. Based on the certainty that (capitalist) economic growth inevitably leads to social progress and modernisation, developmentalism has been used as a dominant paradigm for state and inter-governmental support for various media projects, especially in relation to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. With the inauguration of the United Nations Decade of Women (1975-1985), the issue of gender inequality became increasingly central in developmentalist debates and policies, in response and intersection with the agenda of the international women’s movement. Nor was gendered understandings and narratives of developmentalism limited to this period – as its various articulations circulated before and after the Decade, provoking a wide range of local and transnational responses. A lot of work yet remains to be done on the role of media representations and infrastructures in shaping these processes. Research on these issues – spanning from communication and media studies to international relations, history, sociology, anthropology, and geography – is yet to be integrated into a shared conversation.

The workshop seeks to contribute to the debates on the decolonisation of research and scholarship in the humanities and social sciences and offer new opportunities for exchange by placing media and gender at the centre of discussions of developmentalism. We welcome scholarship on different types of media (film, television, radio, digital media etc), situated within a wide historical period (1945 on), and a variety of geographic and geopolitical positions. Presentations may focus on specific case studies as well as on broader methodological and theoretical questions. Possible topics include:

  • Representations of gender, coloniality and global inequality in developmentalist media 
  • Developmentalist media and social, political, and anti-colonial movements 
  • Feminist (mediated) responses to developmentalism 
  • Archives, technologies, and infrastructures of developmentalist media 
  • Developmentalism and mediated representations of the future 
  • The role of United Nations, UNESCO, the World Bank, governments, and NGOs in the production of media content on gender and development 
  • Developmentalism, contemporary sustainability and environmental programmes (i.e., SDG 2030 agenda), and its intersections with today’s ecofeminist movements and digital media practices.

To generate a shared transnational and comparative framework, the workshop aims to initiate a scholarly conversation on the following methodological questions: 

  • How should issues of difference and coloniality be approached in the study of developmentalist media? 
  • Which research approaches should be adopted to de-Westernise and decolonise the archives of developmentalist media? 
  • Which developmentalist mediated and gendered frameworks could be compared across the Global North/Global South; East/West divides? 
  • Which research methods will lead to a dialogue with activist communities, institutions, and have a potential impact on policy? 

Please submit a 250-300-word proposal with a short bio (max. 150 words) by 30 April 2023 to the organisers: d.missero@lancaster.ac.uk and masha.salazkina@concordia.ca. Upon acceptance, 3 travel bursaries (up to £200 plus accommodation) are available to ECR scholars and academics on precarious contacts