The department is a lively community that is recognised internationally as one of the top centres for research and teaching in development studies.

Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Technological innovation is a key element of industrialisation and catch-up in developing countries. Since innovation is costly, risky and path-dependent, groundbreaking innovation is highly concentrated in a few rich countries and amongst a small number of firms. Foreign sources of technology account for a large part of productivity growth in most countries. If foreign technologies are easy to diffuse and adopt, a technologically backward country can catch up rapidly through the acquisition and more rapid deployment of the most advanced technologies (Eaton and Kortum, 1995; Bell and Pavitt, 1993). Therefore, the development process in low income countries can be supported by tapping existing knowledge and know-how. The transfer, adoption and adaptation of knowledge to low income countries hence constitutes an important issue for economic growth and global development.
Technology diffusion and adoption relies on substantial and well-directed technological efforts (Lall, 1992) as well as sufficient human and financial resources and absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1989). It requires appropriate institutions and policies to incentivise and facilitate the process in addition to strong local capabilities to identify the right technology and appropriate transfer mechanism, and to absorb and make adaptations according to local economic, social, technical and environmental conditions (Fu, et al., 2011). By defining innovation as a new product or process, or new management, organisational or marketing practices (where ‘new’ means new to the world or new to the country or the firm), this project fills in the knowledge gap by exploring determinants and transmission channels for effective innovation creation, diffusion and adoption in LICs under institutional, resource and affordability constraints. In particular, it looks at: