Georgia Tech Hosts Annual Southeast Exchange of Development Studies Conference
Posted May 13, 2026
Georgia Tech and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts hosted the 6th Annual Southeast Exchange of Development Studies (SEEDS) Conference April 30 – May 1.
The 2026 SEEDS conference brought together social scientists from a variety of fields, including economics, international affairs, public policy, and sociology, who are conducting research in the broad area of development. The conference is a joint initiative between the Ivan Allen College, the School of Economics, and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.
“The SEEDS Conference is a signature event at Georgia Tech and the longest-running interdisciplinary conference within the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts,” said Shatakshee Dhongde, associate dean for academic affairs in the Ivan Allen College and professor of economics. “The SEEDS conference began in 2019 with a small gathering of 15 to 20 scholars from institutions across the Atlanta area, brought together to share research in global development. Since then, those initial ‘seeds’ have taken root and flourished. The conference has grown significantly in both size and reputation.”
This year, the SEEDS Conference received more than 70 submissions from scholars and researchers.
Ambassador Isobel Coleman, former deputy administrator of USAID and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was the conference’s keynote speaker. Prior to USAID, Coleman was the chief operating Officer of GiveDirectly, where she helped scale the organization’s innovative model of providing direct cash transfers to the extreme poor. A former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, she has written extensively about foreign affairs.
Her talk was titled: “Getting the Most Bang for the Buck: Using Evidence to Promote Cost-effectiveness in Global Development.”
The conference included a variety of lightning talks and presentations.
Topics included:
- Health and education in South Asia
- Conflict, displacement, and inequality
- Education, reforms, and crime
- Agriculture, climate, and food security
- State capacity, bureaucracy, and corruption
- Land, institutions, and conflict
- Energy, climate policy, and natural hazards
- Politic; networks, partisanship, and resource allocation (fiscal and aid)
- Labor, markets, and entrepreneurship
- Government programs and service delivery
- Schools, identity, and socialization
The SEEDS conference is committed to supporting emerging scholars, with about half of the accepted papers presented by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and assistant professors. The conference also features research and scholarship from a number of distinguished senior scholars — associate and full professors, as well as policy professionals.
“We all have different backgrounds, skills, and experiences, but we’re all united by our core interests in global development and social impact,” said Anjali Thomas, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and director of the Nunn School Global Development program. “And we’ve all chosen to lean into those interests despite all the challenges we are experiencing.”
