On Wednesday, November 18th, 2020, SAIS Perspectives held its annual launch event, introducing the 2020-2021 theme of “
Resilience in International Development.” The event, opened by Editor-in-Chief Markus Specht and moderated by IDEV Program Director Tanvi Nagpal, focused on this year’s theme with inputs from an expert panel of scholars and practitioners. Bringing together a range of voices from international development and related disciplines, the editorial team of SAIS Perspectives thus began an important discussion on how the resilience of systems and communities can be increased in order to take on the world’s inter-connected economic, climate, public health, and social crises in the development field. Throughout the academic year, SAIS Perspectives wants to encourage constructive debate on this issue and aims to gather submissions from across disciplines and concentrations, providing an impetus for policy discussion as well as further research.