SOC ACE researchers chair panel on brokers and power at Dublin development conference

Researchers from SOC ACE chaired a panel on brokerage and power at the Development Studies Association's DSA2026 conference at University College Dublin. Held under the theme "Reimagining Development: Power, Agency, and Futures in an Uncertain World”, the event ran from 8–10 July 2026.

The panel, "Brokers, agency and power in a fragmenting world," was convened by SOC ACE researchers Professor Jonathan Goodhand (SOAS University of London) and Dr Patrick Meehan (University of Manchester), and chaired jointly by them alongside Dr Xu Peng (University of Manchester / SOAS CIVAD). It ran across two sessions on Friday 10 July.

The panel examined how brokers and brokerage have become central to the functioning of states and markets amid growing fragmentation, conflict, and border controls. Topics ranged from paramilitaries acting as "coercive brokers" and intermediaries in extractive industries, to human-trafficking facilitators and the digital brokers underpinning scam centres in South East Asia. Drawing on ethnographic, historical, and network-based approaches, presenters argued that brokers should be understood as pivotal agents shaping development outcomes, rather than merely symptoms of state weakness or market failure.

This event builds on the researchers’ wider work into how conflict-affected borderlands connect to development and wealth accumulation in metropolitan centres. Their project challenges the assumption that violence, poverty and illicit activity in borderlands stem from a lack of integration into wider political economies, arguing instead that these conditions often result from the manner in which borderlands have been integrated, in ways that can serve political and economic elites while disadvantaging local populations. The research addresses a significant gap in understanding how these global supply chains operate at the margins, and what role they play in shaping development elsewhere.

Find out about the Reimagining Development event and read more about the SOC ACE project, The Centrality of the Margins: Borderlands, Illicit Economies and Uneven Development.