The 5th India Public Policy Network Conference will be held in person from 06–08 December 2024 at the Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay). The theme for this edition is Policy Processes in the Global South.

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Public Policy research and writing in the Global South is growing rapidly. Innovative theoretical and empirical approaches are being used to investigate the policy process, with significant efforts focused on exploring its boundaries and the interdisciplinary nature of this field. Given this context, it is imperative to ask what the boundaries of a policy process are. Where does this process begin? Who are the actors and institutions involved, and how are these changing? What are the forms of contestation, knowledge networks, social and technical relations, and power relations that shape policy processes, policy agendas, and policy delivery? How can we rethink policy evaluation? How is public policy evolving as a discipline in the Global South? Additionally, what are the pertinent critiques of extant categories, frames, and methods, including “Global South”? What are the pedagogical practices and challenges of this? Importantly, what methodological shifts in the discipline are necessary in order to better decipher policy processes in the Global South? Beyond this, is there a need to expand theories and policy vocabularies?

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In addition to these questions, we invite panels that cover but are not limited to, the following themes. These themes are indicative but by no means exhaustive. We invite researchers to present their work or curate panels on various sectoral and thematic issues that are pertinent to research in the Global South, given that these have consequences for Public Policy and are also impacted by the policy landscape in which they are situated.

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• Social policy

• Education policy

• Labour policy and labour transformation

• Diversity and public policy

• Culture policy

• Urban policy and governance

• Health policy and practices

• Water and sanitation

• Energy and energy transitions

• Climate change, environmental policy, and sustainability

• Technology and policy

• Digital societies and governance

• Data regimes in contemporary digital societies