Decentre, Connect, Translate: Moving Forward with IDS

In her inaugural lecture, Maggi Leung reflects on the tensions and unease in the research and practice field of IDS, which has roots in assumptions constructed during colonial times regarding racial and developmental hierarchies. Embedded in current academic and social debates, Leung illustrates how she has made contribution to the IDS field often by turning common questions around (e.g. “Who is developing whom?”) and focusing on the in-between’s, as exemplified by her research focus on migration and mobilities that link different contexts relationally. The lecture underlines the need and responsibility among the enfranchised to de-centre (by paying attention to and unsettling power asymmetries), connect (across themes, disciplines and collectives of social engagements) and translate (across languages, media and beyond) in order to move forward IDS and, more broadly, the academia.