Lecturers travel 8,836 miles to speak at Wids

The Warwick International Development Summit (Wids) took place on the weekend of the 20th – 22nd November and has been hailed as a “great success” by its chief organiser, Chessa O’Hara.

The event was held in the Maths and Stats building on the Warwick campus and was opened with a reception on the Friday evening. It included 14 talks, 5 workshops and 16 hours of discussion.

The summit, which is run by the Warwick International Development Society, aims to increase knowledge all over Britain of the global issues concerning international development, climate change and world poverty. It has been hailed by the Guardian as “a great mechanism for global awareness and engagement”.

Speakers over the weekend came from widely dispersed areas of the globe, with the Wids website claiming that the 23 people who spoke at the event had, in total, travelled 8,836 miles to get to the conference.

Those who spoke included lecturers from Warwick such as Professors Abhiney Muthoo, Shirin M. Rai, Chris Woodruff, Ed Page and Sam Adelman and also a number from further afield.

These comprised of speakers from the United Nations, IMF, Dance United, OECD, The London School of Economics (LSE) and Oxford University.

The keynote speech was given by Andrew Mold, a senior economist from OECD in Paris and was entitled “Embracing Emerging Economies in development”.

On being elected to the role of W.I.D.S. president, Chessa O’Hara promised to make the summit “bigger and better” than ever before and, after the summit had finished, said that she has, “definitely succeeded”.