Call for Papers: WIDER Development Conference 2025

UNU-WIDER seeks paper submissions for the 2025 WIDER Development Conference 2025. Over the past two decades, social protection programmes have become a widespread policy tool to reduce poverty and food insecurity in low- and middle-income countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, social safety net programmes providing cash or in-kind transfers have more than tripled since the turn of the millennium. Social protection is an important tool to achieve many SDGs, such as No Poverty, No Hunger and Reduced Inequalities.

This call for papers seeks proposals for innovative research contributions that speak to the central themes of the conference:

• Design, implementation, and financing of social protection
• The impacts of social protection on growth and development
• Social protection during crises and in humanitarian settings
• The political economy of social protection

About the Development Conference 2025

The 2025 WIDER Development Conference takes place in Helsinki, Finland, 09-11 June 2025. Over three days, it brings together academic and policy specialists from around the world to discuss the latest research on social protection in a broad sense, including its design and consequences on individuals or population groups across many dimensions of wellbeing (income, labour market outcomes, education, and health, among others).

It provides a forum to discuss innovative, theoretical, and empirical research and its policy takeaways. It concludes with the 29th WIDER Annual Lecture delivered by Professor Abhijit Banerjee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and features plenary sessions in key research and policy issues, various parallel sessions on the main topics of the conference and poster sessions featuring the work of young scholars.

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Eligibility for Development Conference 2025

• Open to researchers, especially early career, female, and researchers from the Global South.
• Previously unpublished papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in the WIDER Working Paper Series and could be invited for submission to a journal special issue. All papers will be made publicly available on the conference webpage.

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Application

Interested applicants wishing to present original research at the conference on the topics discussed above should complete the online application form.

Each paper submission will require:

• An up-to-date CV.
• An an extended abstract (in PDF format) of around 500-800 words in plain English text which should summarize the research question, the main methods and data, and key findings of the paper and the larger implications of the research. This document should also include all author names and affiliations.

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