What We Do

The Research and Development department’s mandate is to bring critical, challenging and thought provoking content to INDePth participants through captivating speakers, inspiring workshops and meaningful debate. Our team has a crucial role in INDePth as it will help shape the student experience. Currently, our dedicated team is working on the key themes and workshop topics, as well as seeking out speakers and panellists. These will include a mixture of distinguished professors, public officials and NGO practitioners who will contribute their valuable experiences to our participants.

Our department consists of our Vice President, Program Director, Workshop facilitators and Stream researchers who will focus on the specific academic content of the workshops. This will include key ideas, assumptions, theories and case studies related to development and within the context of each topic.

Currently, we are researching and compiling information pertaining to these
topics, as well as selecting important readings, articles and videos that can be shared with participants before the conference via the INDePth website. Stay tuned for more updates from R&D!

Themes and Streams

The overarching theme of INDePth 2013 is “The End of Development” and deconstructing our current understanding and assumptions of development through the lens of China. Given China’s remarkable rise from an underdeveloped status to that of an emerging superpower, there are also questions surrounding what will signal the end of China’s journey as a developing nation and establish its identity as a mature developed actor on the world stage. The goal of INDePth 2013 is to explore possible answers to these questions by examining China’s developmental path, noting its strengths and problematizing its weaknesses to arrive at holistic understanding of development and what the implications of China’s rise are on the way we approach development in the future. Attention will be paid to China’s impressive economic strategies and defiance of modernization theory, as well as to China’s longstanding issues with responsibility for human rights and the environment.

The Chinese landscape has become a pivotal and vibrant place for political change.

In addition, 2012 marks the year that Hu Jintao will step down as leader, bringing in a new era of Chinese leadership. The Chinese landscape has become a pivotal and vibrant place for political change. Leadership succession, environment, international relations and politics are among several topics to be discussed this year. In short, China’s development will be examined from all angles to provide a fair, but analytical approach.