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.”
Unlike public intellectuals and academic scholars who claim that populists thrive on fear of minority groups (e.g. Michael Moore, Martha Nussbaum), we suggest that what they thrive on is anger against governmental actors. It is governmental actors who increasingly rely on fear, be it to pursue policy objectives or to keep populists at bay. The Brexit referendum, election of Donald Trump, and COVID-19 are cases in point. In a battle for the hearts and minds of the people, governmental and populist actors send fear and anger signals, respectively. We theorize this contest of fear and anger as the fear-anger cycle and trace it in concrete manifestations.
By way of example: In the case of COVID-19, governmental actors, which may include politicians from oppositional parties such as Labour in the UK, sent fear signals related to real and constructed danger. These fear signals resonated percolated through mainstream media and resonated with citizens, translating into more support for governmental actors. To the extent that fear-driven policies have induced significant dislocation and frustration among the populace (economic recession, job losses etc.), the politics of anger has been hitting back with a vengeance.
We apply machine learning and sentiment analysis to social and public media data obtained from Twitter and GDELT, as well as events and public opinion data, to investigate the following set of hypotheses.