The pre-conference events will take place on Thursday, Sept. 10, prior to the opening of the conference itself at 5:00 p.m. that day. The workshops and talks planned for that day are below.
Children and Youth, Human Development, and Research Methods: operationalising the capability approach
Sept. 10, 9:00 am – 10:30 am
Georgetown University Conference Center, Salon D
Organized by the Children and Youth thematic group, this workshop is an opportunity to meet in person with group members and others to share methods, information, and ideas for improving research. Research methods for research on/with children and young adults will be discussed (both qualitative/participatory and quantitative). The workshop will be divided in two parts: In the first part, participants will work together in small groups and will focus on critical aspects of their research on/with children; in the second part, each small group will present their results to the other participants.
Organizers: Mario Biggeri, Caroline Hart and Caterina Arciprete
Steven Radelet talk: “The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World”
Sept. 10, 9:00 am – 10:30 am
Copley Formal Lounge
We live today at a time of the greatest development progress among the global poor in world history. Never before have so many people, in so many countries, made so much progress, in so short a time in so many dimensions of development. Since the early 1990s more than one billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty, average incomes in developing countries have nearly doubled, child mortality has fallen sharply, life expectancy has grown, war and violence have declined, millions more girls are in school, and democracy—often fragile and imperfect—has become the norm. In this talk Steven Radelet will discuss what has happened and how this progress can be sustained and expanded to those still left behind.
Professor Radelet holds the Donald F. McHenry Chair in Global Human Development at Georgetown and was formerly the Chief Economist at USAID and Senior Advisor on Development to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This talk is a preview of his book on this topic, forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.
Global Justice Philosophy in 2015- Taking Stock
Sept. 10, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Georgetown University Conference Center, Salon B
This event takes stock of the current state of global justice theorizing. The program begins with Leif Wenar presenting from his new book Blood Oil which exemplifies engagement with empirical evidence. Other scholars will present work taking new directions in global justice theorizing.
Sustainability and Human Rights: Ethical Dimensions of an Urban Agenda
Sept. 10, 9:00 am -12:30 pm
Georgetown University Conference Center, Salon F
Sponsored by the Ethics and Development, Human Rights, and Sustainability Thematic Groups and the International Development Ethics Association. The event will consist of two panels; the first panel focuses on Human Rights as LGBTQI Rights internationally, as United States immigration issue, and finally within Washington, D.C. The second panel looks at Sustainability issues within Washington, D.C.
8:45 am -9:00 am: Welcome
9:00 am -10:30 am: LGBTQI rights; D.C., the Border and Beyond
10:30 am -10:45 am: Break
10:45 am – 12:15 pm: Washington, D.C. as a “Sustainable City”
An ‘activation day’ event will be held on Weds., Sept. 9 from 10:00 am-1:00 pm. Participants in the activation day will volunteer with Martha’s Table, a local organization that focuses on feeding the more than 93,000 hungry residents, including 31,000 hungry children, of Washington, D.C.
Capability Measurement: An Overview
Sept. 10, 10:45 am-12:15 pm
Georgetown University Conference Center, Conference Rm 5-6
The workshop provides an overview of research conducted during a fifteen year period that has sought to develop questionnaires, datasets and analyses that illustrate an explicit and full operationalization of Sen’s (1985) original version of the theory. More specifically we shall look at research developed with teams of philosophers, social scientists and economists to operationalize Sen’s core relations and concepts and we shall see how Nussbaum’s list can be adopted for use within the Senian framework. This may be of interest both to academics who are looking for explicit measures of capabilities as well as development practitioners in policy and practice who wish to use data on capabilities to identify needs or evaluate interventions. In the session, participants move from reasons why utilitarianism is a limited ethical framework to developing an understanding of how the capability approach now includes alternative tools that are genuinely ‘workable’ – see for example Anand et al (2009). In addition, we note applications ranging from clinical trials in Oxford to work with marginalised people in Ireland that promise to deepen understanding of human development whilst extending the reach of our approach.
Rajiv Shah talk: “How Data & Evidence are Transforming the Fight for Global Health”
Sept. 10, 10:45 am – 12:15 pm
Copley Formal Lounge
Rajiv Shah (USA) served as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from January 2010 to February 2015, advancing its mission of ending extreme poverty and promoting resilient, democratic societies. He pioneered new public-private partnerships, catalyzed scientific innovation and enlisted the private sector and Congressional leaders of both parties to join in this cause. He also led the U.S. Government’s humanitarian response to catastrophic crises around the world, including the Haiti earthquake, Typhoon Haiyan and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Previously, he served as Under Secretary and Chief Scientist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Prior to that, he spent eight years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from its inception, where he led efforts in global health, agriculture, and financial services.
Health and Disability Worshop
Sept. 10, 12:30 pm – 2:15 pm
Georgetown University Conference Center, Salon E
This workshop will bring together scholars and practitioners who have been working on health and disability issues in relation to the human development and capability approach.
This workshop will be a unique opportunity for participants to discuss their works in progress or planned work on health and disability. Each participant will be given the opportunity to present a relevant project and to receive feedback from other participants.
Frances Stewart talk: “Human Development in Practice: Lessons from 40 years’ country experience”
Click here to download the slide presentation
Sept. 10, 1:15 pm – 2:15 pm
Copley Formal Lounge
Frances Julia Stewart is a world-renowned development economist who directed the Department for International Development at Oxford University and then the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE) there; she remains an advisor to the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative. She was president of the HDCA 2008-2010. She has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex, the 2013 Leontief prize for advancing the frontiers of economic thought from Tufts University, and the 2009 Mahbub ul Haq award for lifetime achievement in promoting human development from the United Nations Development Programme.
Exploring Education with the Capability Approach
Sept. 10, 1:15 pm – 3:15 pm
Georgetown University Conference Center, Salon D
This workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to meet others interested in the field of education ahead of the main HDCA conference.
In particular this workshop will explore the opportunities and challenges of applying a capability approach to researching and understanding educational matters. The scope of educational matters may encompass formal and informal teaching and learning opportunities across the life course as well as policy in all its guises. We are interested in sharing experiences of developing research strategies, questions and methods in ways that draw upon, or reflect, a capability paradigm.
You do not need to be an active researcher to attend this workshop. However, we welcome proposals from individuals or groups who wish to present or discuss their work in this arena.
Indigenous Peoples Living on Tribal Lands: Challenges and Opportunities
Sept. 10, 2:00-4:00 pm
Georgetown University Conference Center, Conference Rm 5-6
This will be a discussion led by members of the Native American Students’ Council of Georgetown University, who will provide an overview of American Indian life on reservations with a particular focus on youth.
In the morning, there will be a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian (http://nmai.si.edu/) including the featured exhibition: Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations.
HDRO Panel: Human Development at a Crossroad – Revisiting the Concept and the Measurement
Sept. 10, 2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Copley Formal Lounge
Human Development Reports have been published near annually since 1990, addressing development issues and challenges ranging from globalization to cultural diversity, from economic growth to environmental sustainability, from democracy to climate change. The time has come to revisit the simple but powerful basic notion of human development – a process and outcome of enlarging people’s choices. It is also time to reflect on how we continue to measurement of human progress.
There are issues and aspects which till now remain unresolved, unanswered and unvisited. For example, the human development notion focuses on individual choices, but the issue of collective choices was never addressed. How does the society make trade-offs? Similarly, there is a hierarchy among choices and there is a prioritization at individual and societal levels. How does the human development concept deal with these?
Lead speaker: Dr. Selim Jahan, Director of the UNDP Human Development Report Office (HDRO), since September 2014. He earlier contributed to nine HDRs. From 2002-2014 he served as Director of the UNDP Poverty Division.
Discussants:
Dr. Gaël Giraud, S.J., Chief Economist at the Agence Française de Développement
Dr. Jaya Krishnakumar, Professor of Econometrics, Institute of Economics and Econometrics, GSEM, University of Geneva