Convened by Natalie Lartey (International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED), UK)

This roundtable aims to:

• Increase awareness of the different ways that racism and coloniality manifest in sustainable development research and communications products.
• Share up to date research that offers insights on the process’s organisations can go through to better understand racism and coloniality in their development narratives. 
• Provide opportunities to discuss the impacts racism and coloniality in narratives have on staff commitment and confidence to tackle racism and coloniality in their research practice.

The session will discuss new rhythms of development focused on sharing insights from an anti-racist narrative reflection process that is underway within IIED.  Discussions will be shared on what constitutes racism in development storytelling drawing from a first piece of research the institute delivered that is here: 20761iied.pdf.  The session will also explore new ant racist or decolonial language and narratives in two topical areas of interest.   These areas are likely to be (1) describing people and places (2) talking about inequity and justice in sustainable development.

The session will facilitate an interactive panel discussion that will discuss a series of relevant questions with panellists.  These questions will be focused on gaining panellists perspectives on how to best measure the type of impact new anti-racist and decolonial language has on staff commitments and confidence to address racism and coloniality in research practice.

Research practice will be defined for panellists.  This definition is likely to include the following areas:

• The selection of research topics
• The securing and disbursement of research funds
• The conceptual approach to research ethics
• Research partnerships and ways of collaborating

(Tentative) speakers:
Natalie Lartey, IIED