This webinar, held on Thursday 24th September 2026, brings together leading international Gender and Development scholars to discuss their contributions to a new Special Issue of Third World Quarterly, co-edited by Dr Annabel Dulhunty and Professor Sharon Bessell (Australian National University). (The issue: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...)

Against a backdrop of democratic backsliding, gender backlash, heightened inequality, and the continued dominance of ‘smart economics’, the discussion will consider what a feminist response to these challenges might look like, and whether Gender and Development (GAD) can be revitalised to meet the needs of the present.

Panellists:

Andrea Cornwall (Kings College London) is a Professor of Global Development & Anthropology, and social anthropologist by training, who works on questions of rights and justice in relation to gender, sexuality, participation, democracy and development.

Nedha de Silva (Monash University) is a sociologist and political economist based at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, where she is working as a Research Fellow on the RACE for 2030 Scenarios for Future Living project. Her current research explores the energy transition, the future of work, entrepreneurship and construction.

Lata Narayanaswamy (University of Leeds) is an Associate Professor in the Politics of Global Development, School of Politics and International Studies. Her research critically reflects on gendered/intersectional and post/decolonial dynamics of development knowledge and its perceived contribution to addressing global development challenges.

Elaine Unterhalter (University College London) is a Professor of Education and International Development. She has published extensively on gender, international education policies, and engagements in a range of national and local settings.

Hadia Majid (Lahore University of Management Sciences) is Associate Professor and Chair of Economics. Her research examines gender, labour markets, digital inclusion, and development in the Global South, with a particular focus on women’s work and economic opportunity in Pakistan.

Kalpana Wilson (Birkbeck, University of London) is a Senior Lecturer in International Development. Her research explores questions of race and gender in international development, with a particular focus on reproductive justice in the context of neoliberalism, imperialism, and fascism in South Asia and its diasporas.

Rebeca Cruz (Loughborough University) is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work spans the fields of gender and social inclusion, development, disasters, and education. Her research explores how inequalities and power structures shape whose knowledge counts, whose voices are heard, and how policy and practice are experienced.

Sarah Bradshaw (Middlesex University, London) is Professor of Gender and Sustainable Development where her research explores the nexus of gender, development and disasters. Her work critiques extractivist systems, as producing and re-producing both the intersectional-inequalities and the nature-based hazards that together create climate-related disasters.

Chairs & co-presenters:

Annabel Dulhunty (Australian National University) is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of the South Asian Research Institute. Her research focuses on Gender and Development, human rights and the feminist political economy of climate and debt.

Sharon Bessel (Australian National University) is a Professor of Public Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy and Director of the Children’s Policy Centre. Her research focuses on the gendered and generational nature of poverty.

Date: Thursday 24th September (6:30 – 8:00pm AEST)