Issues of health, poverty and development pose fundamental challenges to citizens, scholars and policy-makers. Alone, each represents a problem of significant proportions. Together they create a complex series of crises with varying regional impacts, crises which are linked to many areas of social research, from social policy to debt relief, from the collapse of civil society to the politics of marginalization. It is the purpose of this workshop to explore these crises in their local manifestations and global linkages.