Progressive development economics in an era of geopolitics, affordability crisis and climate change

The symposium "Progressive development economics in an era of geopolitics, affordability crisis and climate change - in Memoriam Cornelia Staritz" took place on June 25–26, 2026, at the ÖFSE in Vienna, celebrating the academic legacy of Cornelia Staritz (1980–2025) and her contributions to heterodox development economics.

The first day opened with a memorial session in which colleagues from across her career - at the Department of Development Studies, the ÖFSE, WU, and the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences - shared reflections on her academic journey and the impact of her work, including the REMASS project.

The second day was organised around the three main clusters of Cornelia's work, each addressed in a dedicated panel:

The first panel, on consumption, examined the climate crisis, extractivism, and provisioning systems.
The second, on production, engaged with global value chains, industrial policy, and labor struggles in a shifting geo-economic landscape.
The third, on finance, addressed financialization and global inequality, including pathways toward de-financialization.

Across the panels, interdisciplinary scholars traced the causes, mechanisms, and outcomes of current shifts in the global financial, economic, and political system. The symposium closed with a synthesis session during which the participants discussed progressive alternatives and pathways for sustainable global development and formulated future research questions in the spirit of Cornelia's legacy.