Research at the Department of Development Studies

The Department of Development Studies is a world-leading research-led department, known internationally for its critical approach to development.

We have unrivalled expertise of regional development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, and an outstanding reputation for the study of non-Western development processes and systems of thought.

Our academics and research students work across a wide spectrum of development-related issues that are centrally important to the greatest challenges facing our planet. We aim to shape global debates in the department’s core areas of research.

Research clusters

Global Labour, Activism and Social Justice Cluster

Focusing on the global political economy of production and work; on global activism and social justice; global labour standards and politics; and the interrelations of all these themes with intersecting inequalities of gender, race, and class.

Conflict, Peace and Development Cluster

Focusing on the interrelationships between conflict, peace and (dis)order, and processes of development.

Agrarian Change and Development Cluster

Focusing on the role of agriculture in development processes; capitalist development and agrarian transitions; rural labour markets and poverty; globalisation and agrarian change; land dispossession; movements of agrarian resistance; dynamics of agrarian accumulation in the neoliberal order; rural migration among other questions.