Session Proponent: Jessie Hession Grayman (Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland)

Session Contributors Katja Phutaraksa Neef (Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland); Rebecca Thomas (Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland [with room for one or two more participants to fill out a single session, or possibly more if there is room for a double session on the conference program]

Critical development studies scholars and practitioners have long valued the arts and literature for both their methodological and analytical innovations. This panel broadly acknowledges foundational scholarship by Lewis, Rodgers, and Woolcock and many others who have brought literary and social analysis on popular representations of development in novels (2008), autobiography, music (2021), and film (2013) into development studies. These studies broaden the scope of “what constitutes valid forms of development knowledge,” and welcome other modes of narrative authority and genre to expand our understanding of development encounters. This panel also celebrates arts and literature as innovations for development practice and research method. As Ware writes in the introduction to a newly published handbook on arts and global development: “the arts can heal, educate, earn us livelihoods, and create spaces where communities and individuals can (re)imagine, critically analyse, [and] creatively problem solve.” (Ware 2024). Presentations in this session will include: a review of literary outputs in the wake of humanitarian interventions in Aceh, Indonesia (Grayman); arts-based activism among Banaban diasporic youth in the Pacific (Neef); and collaborative arts-based research methods to add depth and refinement to how we understand experiences of climate-induced migration in Samoa (Thomas). We welcome further contributions to this session from students, practitioners, and scholars.