The 2015 Developmental Leadership Program Annual Conference will bring together the latest thinking on the politics of inequality.

We are inviting both academics and practitioners to propose conference papers, and empirical research and case studies are particularly welcome.

Inequality has recently been rediscovered by academics and policymakers, from Palma to Piketty, from Obama to the post-2015 High Level Panel. But the scope of much of the debate is narrow.

Wealth and income draw most of the attention. Other inequalities – based on gender, ethnicity or geography, for example – tend to be overlooked. Questions are asked about inequalities between individuals, but less often about why entire groups fare less well than others. And what of the political, social and economic processes that lie behind inequalities?

The conference will showcase papers that address how politics creates or maintains inequalities, and that discuss which inequalities and why. Who are the actors, what are the social structures involved? How do power, norms and ideas sustain inequalities? What is the role of leadership in perpetuating or alleviating inequalities?

In a nutshell, the conference aims to consider the politics of inequality – and the inequality of politics.

For more details of the theme and the questions we will be exploring, please see the full call for papers (PDF, 200KB). The deadline for proposals of no more than 300 words is Monday, 1 December 2014. The conference will be held at the University of Birmingham on Thursday, 12 February 2015.