Organised by the Finnish Society for Development Research, the Development Days Conference annually brings discussions on themes related to the development issues.

Titled: “Development in Ruins, Hope in the Cracks: A Time for Reckoning, Reclaiming and Reawakening”, the next year’s edition will take place in Helsinki, Finland, from 26 - 27 February 2026. During the meeting, participants will showcase papers and deliver presentations on various related sub-themes, organised in 20 working groups.

Working Group 18: The Political Economy of the Green–Digital Transition, led by the Research Group on Economy, Technology and Society (GETS) - LUT University, will explore the twin transition from a critical political-economic perspective, aiming to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars of various related fields.

The working group invites theoretical and empirical papers that engage with:

• How EU and national policy frameworks construct and operationalise the “twin transition”: what political-economic logics, growth models and imaginaries underpin them?
• The roles of digital infrastructures, platforms, AI systems and data governance regimes in structuring the green transition and reorganising labour–capital relations
• The geopolitics of AI and digital infrastructures, in the context of decarbonisation, including new forms of dependency, extraction and uneven development between the Global North and the Global South
• How emerging governance models reproduce or challenge tensions between economic competitiveness, ecological sustainability and social justice?
• Intersections between energy systems, digital technologies and financial instruments in shaping new regimes of accumulation, risk and control
• Public policies and regulatory experiments related to the green–digital transition, their limitations and the scope for democratic alternatives
• Or any other related topic.

The session will consist of paper presentations, a roundtable discussion among presenters and invited commentators as well as a short open discussion with the audience.

Submission details

Deadline: 30 November 2025

Abstract length: maximum 300 words

Submission email: rodrigo.santaella.goncalves@lut.fi