Join us for a talk with David Chandler, professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster. He will present his research on new forms of international intervention, particularly those projected in humanitarian, therapeutic, ethical and human rights language. His books include ‘Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building’; ‘From Kosovo to Kabul (and Beyond): Human Rights and International Intervention’; and ‘Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton’. This talk seeks to critically engage with the view of the human and of human agency articulated within development discourse. This paper genealogically draws out the changing nature of western discourses of development and the understanding of policy practices as promoting the empowerment of the post-colonial other in order to examine how development and autonomy have been radically differently articulated in discourses of Western power and how today’s discursive framing feeds on and transforms colonial and early postcolonial approaches to the human subject.