On 22 and 23 May 2025, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) celebrated its 50th anniversary with a jubilee event. It brought together representatives of leading development research and training institutes.
Under the umbrella of reflecting on the past and looking to the future, participants looked back towards the turbulent times during which the organisation was founded and the state of crises the world finds itself in now – and discussed how development research can contribute to better understanding and sustainable transformation.
IDOS Director Prof. Anna-Katharina Hornidge chaired a panel on “The New South, a New Reality” with panellists Dr Iliana Olivie, EADI Vice-President and Director of the European Think Tanks Group, Dr Andrea Ordóñez, Senior Research Fellow at Southern Voice, and Dr Indrajit Roy, Senior Lecturer at the University of York. The panel reflected on the extent to which concepts like “The New South” enable better understanding of the world by expressing growing agency and interdependence of a group of heterogeneous countries with shared positionalities regarding postcolonial continuities, but also analysed how South / North divides need to be overcome. They discussed ideas of multipolarity and multiplexity, and analysed how development and financial cooperation can be envisioned in a “post-aid world”.
