In-person November Annual Meeting 2025
1. Co-sponsored panel with Religion and the Social Sciences Unit: Religion and Development 2025-2030
The next five years will be a momentous and potentially tumultuous time for development agendas. In the run up to the end of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030 and the incoming Trump administration in the US and its effects on international development funding and practices, shifts in our understandings of faith-based development, localization, the role of local faith actors, freedom of religion and belief, and strategic religious engagement are likely to evolve. We are interested in papers that speak to these evolutions:
- The effects on FBOs of shifts in development policy between US administrations
- The effects of religious freedom framings on development as a priority area of interest under Trump administrations
- A focus on local faith actors and localization in humanitarian and development work
- How strategic religious engagement is being conceived and implemented in development practice
- Planning for 2030 and how to include faith actors in the post-2030 agenda
- Reflections on faith actor roles in advocacy for an implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, and what should be learned for post-2030
2. Co-sponsored panel with the Religion and Migration Unit: Religion and Climate Migration
Changes in environments – often a consequence of rapid and radical anthropogenic climate change – are an increasingly important driver of migration. Despite a consensus among scholars that the environmental impact on migration is difficult to measure, its significance for the movement of people across the globe needs to be studied. This co-sponsored session seeks proposals that explore the nexus between religion and climate migration from both empirical and explanatory angles, including normative questions. We are interested in
- case study examples of religious beliefs and practices affecting and being affected by climate migration;
- the collaboration of faith-based organizations in humanitarian and development interventions for climate migrants;
- the contribution that different and diverse faith traditions make to emerging normative frameworks that aim to address the governance of climate migration; and
- the challenge that climate migration poses to discourse about people on the move, both locally and globally;
- definitional and conceptual debate on the parameters of this emerging area of research on intersections of religion and climate migration.
Online June Annual Meeting 2025
The State of Religion and International Development
We welcome papers on any topic connected to religions and international development. In 2025, we are interested in convening discussions on the state of our field, and including insights from those in both research and practice.
It is now over 20 years since religions and development-specific publications, conferences, and research projects started emerging and collating into a research area. We aim to provoke debate on the state of our field as a whole and interrogate where we should consolidate work or branch into new territory. The following questions can be a guide:
- What is the state-of-the-art in our field? What is the most cutting edge research?
- What topics in religions and development have seen the most significant growth and improvement over the last five years?
- What topics in religions and development are underdeveloped and need more research in the next five years?
- Does religions and development have enough research and researchers working in the area to count as its own field or discipline? What would define the parameters of religions and development as a field?
- How do we represent the “evidence base” in religions and development to policy makers and practitioners? Where have people got the “right” message about the evidence and where do inconsistencies and misconceptions lie?
We welcome submissions on these and any other related topics, including:
- Religion, conflict, and peacebuilding
- Gender, religion, and development outcomes
- Religious motivations and development practice
- Interfaith dialogue and collaboration
We welcome submissions from a diverse range of perspectives, including scholars, practitioners, and faith-based leaders.