DSAI, IFGH & Gender ARC Partnership for 2013 Conference

Posted by Irish Forum for Global Health | News

The DSAI 2013 annual conference will be a collaborative event in association with two other Ireland-wide research networks – the Irish Forum on Global Health (IFGH) and the Gender Advanced Research Consortium (Gender ARC). It will be titled: ‘Health and Gender Equity in a Period of Global Crisis’.  It arises from the discussions of the DSAI2012 conference convenors, and wider DSAI membership at the DSAI AGM on 5 September, 2012.  It seeks to fulfilone of the DSAI objectives, namely to build an inclusive and participatory platform for development studies in Ireland.  It is committed also to enhancing the development debate and the interactions between theory, policy and practice.

Location: Galway (recent DSAI annual and postgrad conferences have previously been held in DCU, Limerick, Cork and Maynooth).

Proposed date and timing: one and half days 28/29 November 2013.

Rationale, aims and scope:

The DSAI Annual conference is an annual event, which is coordinated by the DSAI Conference Committee on behalf of the Steering Committee.  DSAI aims to advance development studies, bring the development studies community in Ireland together, and enhance research capacity and policy relevance.  The past two conferences have succeeded in building capacity by setting an agenda of ‘linking research, policy and practice’.  There is now a desire to take theDSAI annual conference to a new level in its engagement and promotion of development studies, bringing to the fore a more distinct, thematic research agenda as piloted at the February 2013 Governance Seminar held at DCU.

Two prominent research themes that have emerged through the past DSAI events, and especially the postgraduate event and annual conference in 2011 and 2012, are health and gender. The conference theme will therefore reflect these prominent themes. These two research themes have been developed in collaboration with two other Ireland-wide research groupings active in health and gender research: the Irish Forum on Global Health (IFGH) and Gender Advanced Research Consortium (Gender ARC).  The aim is to maximise research collaboration and capacity, andminimise the risks of fragmenting and overstretching researchers active in these fields.

The conference title: ‘Health and Gender Equity in a Period of Global Crisis’ enables DSAI, IFGH and Gender ARC to make distinct, yet complementary contributions while advancing a common development research agenda responding to key current issues on the development agenda.
Conference format and process:

Each collaborating group (DSAI, IFGH, Gender ARC) will commission a position paper of 1,500-2,000 words, responding to the conference title and setting a theme that will give coherence to the call for papers within each strand.  Abstracts will be called to respond to the position papers and full papers considered for acceptance by the conference organising committee that reflects and represents all three research networks.  A broader academic panel of referees will be used if necessary.

More information:

• Read a draft programme for the conference.
• A call for papers and registration opens in the autumn.
• For further information or to register your interest in this conference, please contact Dawn Quinn, DSAICoordinator at: dquinn4@tcd.ie or call: 01-896 3668