Participating throughout the course will be three international experts:

• Diana Conyers  is Research Officer at Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, teaches Governance and Development and writes on decentralisation, empowerment and democracy, primarily in Southern Africa; 

• Graham Harrison, is Senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Recently he published the volume The World Bank and Africa: the Construction of Governance States London: Routledge, 2004;

• Richard Crook is Professor and Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, teaches Globalization and Development and is the author of The law, legal institutions and the protection of land rights in Ghana and Côte d´Ivoire, IDS, University of Sussex, 2007.    

Approaching Organizations will be based on a combination of the key-note presentations and Ph.D. presentations. The key-note speakers will present their own research on organizations and the challenges they themselves have had to deal with in their research. Each key-note speaker will also act as discussant on one third of the Ph.D. Project presentations (approximately six presentations each of a length of ten pages). The Ph.D. presentations will thus take place in three parallel workshops whereas the key-note presentations will be in panel sessions.

In addition there will be a number of senior research staff from the organising institutions lecturing at the course.

The course will provide an excellent opportunity for Ph.D. students to learn of the latest directions in research in the field and to receive comments from some of the leading international experts in the field of organizations in development. 

The course will address a number of important questions including: 

• What forms of authority and legitimacy do organizations draw upon and utilize?
• How does one explore organizational capacity, and what are the sources of such capacity?
• To what extent are organizational types universal and to what extent contextually and historically specific?
• What resources do different types of organizations draw upon in the promotion of development (political, social, financial, etc)?
• What methodologies are best suited to the study of organizations?

Deadline for application (send in a brief abstract): October 20, 2008;

Deadline for max ten page paper: November 10, 2008;

Applications should be sent to: Contact at IDS, Ms. Inge Jensen (inge@ruc.dk);

For selected students, a fee of Euro 300 will have to be paid;

^{Participants will receive 4 ECTS points.}

More information can be gaind at info@hotel-sofryd.dk