Global Talks Live: Rethinking global development in an era of cuts & divides: Disaster or opportunity?

The global landscape of development aid and research funding is undergoing a profound shift, with significant budget cuts threatening crucial initiatives that support vulnerable communities across the world. These reductions risk deepening inequalities, stalling critical research, and weakening grassroots organisations that depend on external support.

Yet, while the consequences of these cuts are severe, they may also present an opportunity to rethink the structures of cooperation, collaboration and research with marginalised communities, moving towards more localised, decolonised and bottom-up models of development.

The Global Talk Live will explore these dual realities, bringing together thought leaders, practitioners, and researchers to discuss how we can, together, navigate these uncertain times. 

Agenda

• Meet and greet with coffee from 8:30
• Welcome address at 9:00
• Rethinking global development in an era of cuts & divides: Disaster or opportunity?
  Speaker: Brian Palmer, social anthropologist and associate professor at Uppsala University (see bio and abstract below)
• Networking and discussions onsite in Umeå, Ultuna and Alnarp, respectively, with coffee refill 

Abstract for Brian Palmer's presentation

Strongmen Gone Wild: Derangement and Possibility in 2025 Our egalitarian and ecological endeavors are being undermined in a global authoritarian turn. How do we as engaged intellectuals in Sweden make sense of this ongoing transformation? What kinds of resistance are possible? What can we still hope to build, even in dark times? A mercifully short lecture will be followed by a practical exercise and a chance to find new allies over coffee.

Bio Brian Palmer

Social anthropologist Brian Palmer is an associate professor at Uppsala University's Dept. of Theology. He previously held the Torgny Segerstedt Guest Professorship at the University of Gothenburg and taught at Harvard, where his courses on social engagement attracted up to 600 students per term. Palmer received the Levenson Prize as Harvard’s best teacher as well as Uppsala University's Pedagogical Prize. He and Ola Larsmo wrote the book 101 historiska hjältar. Brian was a host (sommarpratare) on the radio program Sommar i P1.