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.”
Taanya’s DPhil thesis focuses on the use of Conditional Cash Transfer schemes(CCTs) by the Indian government as a means of combating discrimination against daughters, through the use of monetary incentives and the imposition of conditionalities. Taanya’s work seeks to raise the ethical and moral debates in the use of cash as a tool to alter parental perception and treatment of daughters, especially in a patriarchal context in India. A key question for this research is understanding how welfare policies contribute to a specific construction of the category of the ‘daughter’, both in government discourse and practice, and the wider socio-cultural implications of schemes like CCTs on gendered norms and practices. The project is situated in the larger universe of the financialization of intimate lives through instruments such as cash transfers, which produce the figure of the ‘girl’ as a subject of political and social investments through governmental policies.