The 3 day international conference “Progress, change and development: past, present and future” conference will take place at University of Portsmouth, 4- 6 June 2015.

The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring some of the generation who were involved in attempts to bring about change in the 1960s and 1970s together with researchers, theorists, practitioners, activists from the younger generations today. It will examine and debate how progress and development were conceptualised, practised and imagined during the periods of national liberation struggles, of decolonisation and its aftermath, of political and social upheaval and change.

It will analyse successes and failures on all levels and explore new ways of thinking that are being developed at the present time, particularly those that break with the prevailing consensus. By bringing the different generations into contact and interaction with each other, it is hoped to create a forum to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and understanding of the earlier period, on the one hand, and the expression and elaboration of new ideas of progress and development and how they might be achieved, on the other.

Confirmed speakers include Samir Amin (Third World Forum, Dakar), Alice Cherki (psychoanalyst), Beïda Chikhi (Université de Paris – Sorbonne), Catherine Lévy (CNRS) and Jacques Sauvageot (Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Rennes).

Please click here to proceed to the conference webpages.

Registration is now open.

Please send all enquiries to the conference organisers, Prof Margaret Majumdar and Dr Joanna Warson, at francophone@port.ac.uk or via twitter (@UoP_Francophone).

This conference is generously supported by the Centre for European and International Studies Research, the Society for the Study of French History and the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France.