The next decade and beyond are an age of global crises. This group will focus on a set of questions related to the ‘global crises’ or poly-/perma- crisis of development. The distinction is that the crises are multiple, compound and interconnected thus an inter-disciplinary and 360-degree view from around the world is required.

Emerging questions include:

• What is the core crisis?
• Are developing countries experiencing one polycrisis or many separate crises?
• What is cause and what is a symptom?
• Is this likely to be a long crisis?
• Can it be fixed?
• Is it a crisis of capitalism, a crisis of governance or a crisis of ideas or simply the ongoing day-to-day crisis for many of the world’s population? In short, whose crisis is it?
• Who frames the crisis cause and solutions?
• Will there be a final collapse or a long period of dystopia, dysfunctions and suffering for millions of people?

This group will also focus on the study of development within the ‘global crises’. Questions include:

• How can research respond to the frequent, interconnected and mutually reinforcing crises the world is facing, and is likely to face in years to come?
• How do different approaches contribute to our understanding of crises and what to do about them?
• How can these approaches help analyse and understand the idea of crisis differently?
• Are these interpretations in tension or are they complementary?
• Will research be able be truly inter- and trans-disciplinary and contribute to the understanding of policy and governance challenges?

The group aims to approach the crises by building a 360-degree view with inter-disciplinary perspectives from around the world.