STEPS centre recent events

Recent STEPS events

To try and make our events as accessible as possible, we produce material for many of them - reports, speaker presentations, audio, video and blogs - to enable people who were not able to join us on the day, to keep in touch with what happened.

Material from recent STEPS Seminars

See also the list of upcoming STEPS events.

1 July: STEPS Centre Seminar - Game-Changing China: Lessons from China about Disruptive Low Carbon Innovation. David Tyfield, Lancaster University. Seminar flyer (pdf, 63kb)

17 June: STEPS Centre Seminar: 'Biotech Innovation for Sustainability in Developing Countries: A Perspective from China'. Yantai Chen, STEPS Centre Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research fellow at China Institute for Science and Technology Policy (CISTP) and School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University, China. Seminar flyer (pdf, 67kb)

17 June: STEPS Centre Seminar: 'Technologies for Social Inclusion in Latin America'. Juan Mariano Fressoli, Researcher, Instituto de Estudios sobre la Ciencia y la Tecnología, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina. Seminar flyer (pdf, 66kb) / Mariano's slides

15 June: Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto launch event. Royal Society, London, 9am-5pm (watch video of the launch)

1 June: STEPS Water Seminar: ‘Play mediation in natural resources management: reflections on the use of games, gaming and models in equitable water allocation’. Bruce Lankford, School of International Development, University of East Anglia. Water Seminar flyer (pdf, 50kb)

19 May: STEPS Water Seminar: The Roots and Future of Water Conflicts in the Middle East. Mark Zeitoun, School of International Development, University of East Anglia. 1-2.30pm, IDS Convening Space. Seminar flyer (pdf, 61kb)

24-25 May: Beyond Scaling Up conference, IDS, Brighton.
The STEPS Centre and its affiliate partner Future Health Systems launched a series of activities that challenge the thinking behind prevailing concepts of “scaling up” in the health sector.

11 May: University of Sussex Professorial Lecture by STEPS Centre food and agriculture co-convenor Erik Millstone. Can science and politics help keep each other honest?

15 March: A New Manifesto Roundtable and public debate at Jubilee Library, Brighton, UK.
Public debate flyer (PDF, 126KB)

12 March: STEPS Water Seminar - Mansoor Ali, Practical Action. Discussions: Are there any secret millionaires in waste? The framings of real waste systems in Karachi and Dhaka; Modernisation and globalisation of waste systems and their divide with the real systems.
Mansoor Ali's presentation (Slideshare)

1 March: STEPS/Sussex Energy Group Seminar - Rob Byrne, SPRU (flyer). The challenges of low-carbon development: From technology transfer to socio-technical transformation.
Rob Byrne's presentation (Slideshare)

26 Feb: STEPS Water Seminar - Edmilson Costa Teixeira, Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), Brazil (flyer). The Brazilian Water Resources Management Policy & Space for Social Participation.

12 Feb: A New Manifesto round table in Bangalore, India. Part of the TWAS-ROCASA Conclave of Afro-Asia Young Scientists “Energy, Climate & Development”. Photos (Flickr)

8 Feb 2010: A New Manifesto round table in New Delhi, India. With Ashok Parthasarthi, former Scientific Advisor to late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Photos (Flickr)

17-18 Dec 2009: STEPS Centre System of Rice Intensification (SRI) roundtable.

7-11 Dec: Conference: The Publics of Public Health. On politics, ethos and economy of 21st century African bioscience. Kilifi, Kenya (pdf 138kb) Challenging new arrangements for health research and care are emerging amidst globalisation, privatisation and the rise of new marketised and pluralized systems. What are the 'new publics' emerging in this context? Who is benefiting and who is losing? A conference co-convened by, and featuring speakers from the STEPS Centre.

8 Dec: TWAS-ROSSA conference - Manifesto project roundtable in Nairobi.

4 Dec: Manifesto project roundtable in Nairobi. Convened by Andrew Adwera of African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS)

24 Nov: Manifesto project roundtable at 3TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology and the Delft Centre for Entrepreneurship (TU Delft), The Hague, the Netherlands. Convened by Ilse Oosterlaken.

7 Oct: Manifesto project roundtable with SPRU Alumni, Brighton, UK.

7 Oct: The 13th Marie Jahoda lecture, given by Professor Calestous Juma, Director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University. Professor Juma's lecture is entitled 'Rebooting Development: Innovation policy in the age of technological abundance'. Watch the lecture on blip.tv

24 Sept: STEPS Centre Symposium: Innovation, Sustainability, Development: Emerging Emerging themes, challenges and opportunities (pdf)

Dangerous Ideas in Development - GM Crops and the Global Food Crisis

The STEPS Centre held an event in Parliament on 10 June 2009 as part of the Institute of Development Studies' Dangerous Ideas in Development debates, organised with the APG Debt, Aid and Trade. The event launched the STEPS Biotechnology Research Archive and a new paper on Bt Cotton by Dominic Glover. Dominic, Peter Newell of UEA and Erik Millstone were the speakers
Photos from the event
Biotechnology Research Archive
Working Paper: Undying Promise: Agricultural Biotechnology's Pro-Poor Narrative, Ten Years On
Briefing: Transgenic cotton; a 'pro-poor' success?
Ian Scoones' backgrounder, GM Crops: 10 Years On
Dominic Glover on the Undying Promise
GM Crops and the Global Food Crisis event, June 10, London
id21 Viewpoints: GM Crops
Eldis Biotechnology Key Issues Guide

Kofi Annan backs our work on a 'Green Revolution in Africa'

Kofi Annan chaired a new vision for agricultural development in Africa conference, hosted by STEPS affiliate the Future Agricultures Consortium and the Salzburg Global Seminar.
Newsletters, media, photos, blog and more from this event

Transboundary animal disease and market acess: future options for the beef industry in southern Africa

Material from the international workshop, 7-8 April in Pretoria, SA and papers, briefings and information about this 18 month study

Global Uncertainties

the ESRC Festival of Social Science flagship event on 12 March at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. STEPS director Melissa Leach spoke on 'Securing a safer, sustainable and equitable world' and wrote for the ESRC's The Edge magazine. Spring 2008, Issue 27 Building genuine pathways to a more secure future

Global Environmental Change And Food Systems

Oxford University's Environmental Institute conference on Food Security and Environmental Change, 2-4 April event website

Resilience Alliance Conference

STEPS diirectors and members took part in the conference, which themed 'Resilience, Adaption and Transformation in Turbulent Times', 14-17April.

Farmer First Revisited: twenty years on

12-14 December 2007: In 1987 a meeting of 50 social and natural scientists proIved a defining moment in the development of farmer participation in agricultural research.The Future Agricultures Consortium in association STEPS and IDS hosted an international workshop, Farmer First Revisited, to coincide with the 20th anniversary.
Videos, wiki-timeline, podcasts, papers and more

DSA Conference and STEPS Centre Symposium

18-20 September 2007: STEPS Centre Symposium at the DSA Conference The first STEPS Centre Symposium was held alongside the Development Studies Association annual conference 2007 to tie in with the theme of ‘Connecting Science, Society and Development. The event is being held at the Insitute of Development Studies. Find out more about the STEPS sessions at the DSA

Politics and governance in Berlin

19-21 September 2007: Politics and governance in sustainable
socio-technical transitions (pdf 151kb) Schloss Blankensee/Berlin
Third international workshop in series ‘System innovations for sustainable development’ STEPS member Adrian Smith is co-organising in this event

STEPS Launch

25 June 2007: Dr Ian Gibson MP chaired the launch of the STEPS Centre with speakers from Greenpeace, Demos and Practical Action explaining why the work of the STEPS Centre is so vital right now. Presentations, speakers' quotes, press release, the launch in pictures and more

STEPS at the Brighton Festival

22 May 2007: 'Science friction: making science and technology work for the poor.' Veteran BBC environment correspondent Alex Kirby and members of the STEPS team discussed how science and technology can contribute to poverty reduction.

Delivering Public Value from New Technologies

21 May 2007: A joint seminar from STEPS and Practical Action. Focusing on increasing the recognition of the role of technology in human development, this day-long seminar put the emphasis on improving the choice people have about which technologies are developed and how they are diffused.
Read the report and the speaker presentations