Department of Development Studies

At the Department of Development Studies we offer a range of exciting degree programmes on-campus and online, at BA, MSc and PhD levels.

Our degrees are inter-disciplinary, combining political-economy, politics, anthropology, and history approaches to analyse processes of development in different contexts around the world.

Our academic staff create an intellectually engaged and challenging space across the many branches of international development and humanitarianism that make up Development Studies. They specialise in a range of thematic areas including sustainability and climate change, migration and displacement, conflict, humanitarian action, labour, political ecology, and aid and institutions.

Combined with exceptional resources and our interdisciplinary approach, we offer a unique learning and research opportunity for our diverse and vibrant student community

Our Head of Department says

Welcome to the Department of Development Studies! We are a department of 30 academics and hundreds of students, and our community of alumni, colleagues and friends is worldwide. The study of processes of development is urgent, complex and long-term.

Development Studies places rapidly evolving processes and events in social, political and economic context. This enables scholars to analyse continuities over time, and to identify and explain ruptures and shocks. Development Studies is a live discipline, and our students and staff are challenged to refine our theoretical and practical understanding of why change happens, how power is exercised and in what ways inequalities can be confronted.