The EU as a global development actor working group is co-convening a themed track on the Present and Future of the EU as a Global Development Actor at the UACES conference in Liverppol Aug 31-Sep 3 2025.

The theme call is here: 

The EU presents itself as a major development actor with a global scope and key proponent of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, funding cooperation programmes with countries and regions in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, Asia, and Latin America. The emergence of geopolitics as an explicit guiding logic with more interest-driven cooperation agendas, such as the Global Gateway, has called this image into question. Against this background, the track invites contributions from both EU and non-EU perspectives on, but not limited to:

• the EU’s relations with various parts of the world and external perceptions on the EU,
• the shifting role and understanding of development policy and its place in the EU’s external relations,
• the future direction of policies for global development under the new Von der Leyen II Commission, and
• the implications for the state and the future of EU development studies, including discussions around decolonising

You can then choose to submit to either an individual paper, panel or non-traditional panel-please see https://www.conftool.org/uaces2025/

Deadline Jan 26 2025.

Any question please contact Simon Lightfoot s.j.lightfoot(at)leeds.ac.uk

Track Convenors: Sebastian Steingass, Simon Lightfoot, Pascaline Winand, Niels Keijzer, and María Santillán O’Shea