At the 2009 Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development (ICTD), IT for Change organised a panel titled 'Tracing the genealogy of ICTD research: Premises, predispositions, and paradoxes of a field in the making'. As a field in the making, ICTD is situated right at the centre of an unfolding global transformation process marked by complex and intense power struggles. It thus comprises a contested multi-actor space often implicating competing positions – between technical and social actors, the corporate sector and development constituencies, and the state and communities.
Against this background, the panel sought to examine what visions of development dominate ICTD research; to what extent the issue of power is central to ICTD research; how power is organised among and exercised by different actors within the ICTD research domain; and how the nature of funding of the ICTD research domain, on the one hand, and geopolitical locations of agenda-setting, on the other, potentially influence its form and outcomes. The panelists included Michael Powell, Kentaro Toyama, Onno W. Purbo and Parminder Jeet Singh.