The Research Colloquium on Triangular Cooperation was established in February 2024. It provides a transnational research-focused platform for student presentations and science-policy exchanges on triangular cooperation. Triangular cooperation is a development cooperation modality that combines established North-South and South-South cooperation formats. Triangular cooperation projects and initiatives include at least three partners: a beneficiary (often a “developing” country), a pivotal partner (usually another “developing” country with experiences deemed relevant for the beneficiary) and a facilitator (typically a “donor” country or an international organisation that supports the cooperation between the beneficiary and the pivotal partner).
1. Motivation: why we decided to set up a Colloquium on triangular cooperation
With the economic and political rise of the South over the last two decades, triangular cooperation has become an integral part of how state and non-state actors try to co-shape relationships across North-South divides. Some argue that triangular cooperation carries considerable potential for overcoming vertical donor-recipient relations and managing an increasingly multipolar world, while others are more sceptical about its ability to address underlying power relations. In 2023, the four co-convenors realised that while there was a growing interest among researchers to explore triangular partnerships, a platform for coordination and exchange had been missing. University students, in particular, seemed interested in making sense of triangular cooperation; and the co-convenors thought they would benefit from focused scholarly debate and exchanges with practitioners.
2. Goals: what we have wanted to achieve through the Colloquium
Our goal has been to set up a space that fosters research-focused discussions and in-depth exchanges on triangular cooperation. We wanted to bring together committed individuals from around the globe to enable exchange across academic communities, and with practice-focused experts. We also hoped that, over the course of a year, we would contribute to creating not only stronger ties among individual researchers but also an expert community that would jointly engage in critical reflections on and constructive discussions about the potential and challenges of a cooperation modality that is often hailed as an attempt to transcend established North-South and South-South cooperation templates.
3. Setup: what the contours of the Colloquium have looked like
The Colloquium has taken place since February 2024 as a monthly virtual space. The working language is English. So far, we have had 45 participants overall; 25 individuals from five continents have participated regularly, out of which about 50 percent are students. Participants have included Master’s and PhD students as well as more senior researchers and practitioners – including government officials and representatives from international organisations – from Australia, Brazil, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Zambia. One of the challenges has been to bring together such a diverse group across different time zones. We have settled for a format that provides a stable framework for exchange: a virtual monthly meeting at 8am Mexico City time, allowing participants from across the global to join in, even though our colleagues in East Asia and Oceania have to stay up late, which – to our surprise and joy – they regularly do.
4. Outcomes: what the Colloquium has achieved so far
Based on participant feedback, the innovative nature of the Colloquium has centred on the combination of three dimensions: it is not only interdisciplinary academically and transdisciplinary in its setup but has also provided cross-continental inspiration for participants to form a research-focused community beyond the Colloquium itself.
Interdisciplinarity: With a strong foundation in political science, the Colloquium is an interdisciplinary space. Three co-convenors (Ayala, Haug and Müller) and most student participants have hailed from political science sub-disciplines, notably International Relations; other participants have a background in area studies, agronomy, nutrition studies and public health. This combination of disciplinary perspectives has allowed us to identify different elements of the research presented and encourage their combination in the analysis, e.g. technical innovation and institutional power dynamics in the examination of a triangular agriculture project. Across inputs from different disciplines, co-convenors and participants together have made sure that discussions and exchanges are guided by the same principles that triangular cooperation partnerships aspire to abide by in practice: equal access and voice for all participants (irrespective of background and seniority), a focus on synergies among different approaches, and an openness to unexpected findings.
Transdisciplinarity: In addition to the interdisciplinary academic setup of the Colloquium, we wanted to create a space where experts from all walks of life were able to share and engage. A key feature has thus been the Colloquium’s continuous engagement of practitioners and experts from beyond academic settings. Regular participants have included representatives from Germany’s Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ), the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United Nations (UN) – notably the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) – and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Student participant feedback has repeatedly underlined that it is the combination of rigorous scholarship and academic feedback with practitioner insights that adds the most palpable value to their research projects and has made them attend every single session.
Cross-continental inspiration: The research presented, the discussions we have had and the feedback we have received from participants have by far exceeded our expectations. Scattered across five continents, many of those who participate regularly have never met in person but have ended up forming part of a network connected through a joint interest in critically engaging with ongoing shifts in the global cooperation landscape. Throughout 2024, the Colloquium offered a space for 11 presentations, among them six Master’s theses and PhD projects (some of which were presented at two stages of their respective research processes) as well as numerous exchanges on the sidelines that often focused on the practical implications of students’ research projects. So far, the Colloquium has contributed to (1) an overview of ongoing research projects on triangular cooperation across five continents, (2) a collective sense of the multi-faceted nature of triangular schemes, including some of their major strengths and weaknesses, (3) a detailed understanding of the methodological and theoretical approaches employed to study triangular cooperation, (4) concrete insights for our research projects, teaching processes and grant proposal applications, and (5) an expanding community of triangular cooperation experts. Building on the success of the Colloquium in 2024, we have continued with presentations in 2025 and have added additional formats such as virtual roundtables and co-creative elements.
5. Why the Colloquium has been special
The Colloquium has been firmly rooted in the German political science landscape. Based at TU Darmstadt’s political science department, Müller brought in political science students enrolled in Darmstadt and Frankfurt. Haug has integrated the Colloquium into teaching on international cooperation at IDOS and has co-supervised a Master’s thesis on triangular cooperation at Instituto Mora. Overall, the Colloquium has created a rather atypical learning environment. When compared to other university teaching formats in the German-speaking political science context, the Colloquium’s focus on triangular cooperation as a so far under-researched cooperation modality and its group of participants from five continents stand out as distinctive. The Colloquium’s combination of an interdisciplinary approach to research and a transdisciplinary composition of participants from different sectors has allowed us to not only assemble a unique combination of participants but also contribute to fostering a transnational expert community. Across research institutes, government ministries and international organisations, that community has also taken a life of its own, as participants are in regular contact beyond Colloquium sessions and benefit from the group’s networks and expertise.
About the teachers:
Dr. Sebastian Haug is a senior researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Germany.
Citlali Ayala is a research professor at Instituto Mora, Mexico.
Dr. Ulrich Müller is an honorary professor at Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany.
Dr. Libby Swanepoel is an associate professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Australia.
Über die Reihe „Herausragende Lehre in der deutschen Politikwissenschaft“:
Dieser Beitrag wurde für den Lehrpreis Politikwissenschaft 2025 eingereicht. Der gemeinsame Preis von DVPW und Schader-Stiftung wurde 2020 neu geschaffen, um die besondere Bedeutung der politikwissenschaftlichen Hochschullehre sichtbar zu machen und die Qualität der Lehre in der deutschen Politikwissenschaft zu stärken. Der Lehrpreis Politikwissenschaft wurde in diesem Jahr an Dr. Carmen Wunderlich für ihr Lehrprojekt „Nukleare (Un-)Ordnung im Wandel: Herausforderungen bei der Kontrolle, Nichtverbreitung und Abrüstung von Atomwaffen“ im Wintersemester 2024/25 an der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg verliehen. Die Jury möchte mit dieser Blog-Reihe die Vielzahl der Einreichungen innovativer und didaktisch anspruchsvoller Lehrprojekte würdigen.
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