Geopolitics of development knowledge:
Whose knowledge is seen as relevant concerning solutions to pressing global problems concerning inequality, climate change or social justice? Why are we making distinctions between global and local knowledges? Why are Development Studies concerned with poverty only in certain parts of the world? How do the politics of academic knowledge production and publication (high-ranked journals, pay walls) contribute to maintaining epistemic asymmetries?

Comparisons across the colonial divide:
What are the similarities and differences of development aid in the South and social assistance in the North and of protests against development projects in the South and infrastructure projects in the North? How might we comparatively conceptualise concerns around poverty, inequality, exclusion or rights in the language of ‘global’ development challenges?

Other knowledges:
How can Non-Western concepts and cosmologies contribute to a pluriversal idea of positive social change? How can we maintain a universal concept of rights without suppressing cultural differences? How do we understand and conceptualise the intersectional experience of individuals and groups as ‘other knowledges’ interact with, shape and re-shape, dominant notions of ‘development’?

Mapping colonial patterns:
Are DS curricula and teaching dominated by Eurocentric perspectives and narratives embedded in, and emerging from, ‘white’, patriarchal subjectivities? If so, why has this dominance been so persistent? How is this dominance actively preventing more inclusive and plural research and teaching strategies?

Exploring decolonization:
What does ‘decolonisation’ mean in the context of DS teaching? What are the experiences with attempts to introduce a global perspective and to decolonise the curriculum and the classroom?

“As a white person, I cannot…”:
How can we integrate the question of positionality in teaching without resorting to a deterministic concept of identity potentially leading to pedagogic and political paralysis? How can the postcolonial concept of hybridity be mobilized to support identity politics in a strategic sense where needed, but overcome identity silos wherever possible?

The colonial difference in altruistic practice:
What is the role of race in development cooperation and how does it shape the different perspectives of scholars, teachers and practitioners? What are the experiences of development experts of colour? What, if any, are the effects of diversity in development institutions and how can it be improved?

Learning from the South:
What are the experiences of South-North knowledge transfer or exchange programs (e.g. reverse component of voluntary services like Weltwärts or Voluntary Service Overseas)? How can they be mobilised and translated to other concepts of development cooperation? How do we ‘validate’ knowledge from the Global South given concerns around intersectional and ‘other’ knowledges?

New measurements and indicators:
How can we measure ‘development’ in the sense of positive social change in the North and South? What are the risks and benefits of alternative concepts of wellbeing and alternative indicators? How can we overcome the focus on the production of goods and monetary wealth in the achievement of a “good society” without losing sight of pressing material inequalities?

Overcoming paternalism:
How can development cooperation avoid trusteeship and how can it be made more accountable towards its supposed beneficiaries? What are the experiences with existing accountability mechanisms like the World Bank Inspection Panel? How we can we overcome or prevent a backlash to old, quasi-colonial patterns within new fields of development cooperation, for instance in fields such as energy transition, digitalization, industry 4.0 or finance?