This two-year course will provide you with a rigorous and critical introduction to development as a process of managed and unmanaged change in societies in the Global South.
Overview
Structure
Careers
Photo: Denton Knight, MPhil in Development Studies 2021-23
A Madrasa Early Childhood Program classroom in Zanzibar, Tanzania
The course will introduce you to development studies as an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary subject. It covers the intellectual history of development, the paradigm shifts and internal conflicts within the discipline and the contemporary relevance of research to development policy and practice.
The course is an excellent preparation for a career in development policy or practice or for further study in the field.
Applicants to this degree who are interested in progressing onto doctoral study are eligible to apply for an ESRC 2+2 Studentship which could provide them with four years of full funding. These studentships, previously only available for UK and EU students, are now also available to non-EU students. See the Fees and Funding page for more information.
Introduction to the MPhil in Development Studies
You will develop a knowledge and understanding of key social science disciplines that have a bearing on development studies; the social and development theory that underpins development discourse and policy intervention; the past and present social, political and economic conditions of developing countries; and qualitative and quantitative research methodologies in the social sciences.
You will be able to choose from a list of options on a range of topics relevant to development, allowing you to tailor your learning to match your own particular interests. Over the summer between your first and second years you will have the opportunity to carry out fieldwork towards your dissertation.
Teaching is delivered through lectures, classes and workshops, each course entailing up to four hours of teaching per week. Class sizes are small – between 5 and 30 students – encouraging active participation and enabling students to learn from each other.
The Course Director for 2024/25 is Dr Simukai Chigudu.
The application deadline for 2025-26 entry is 3 December 2024. Please note that this is earlier than in previous years. See the course webpage on the University Graduate Admissions pages for more information.
Teaching awards
The following staff, who teach on the MPhil in Development Studies, have all won Oxford University Teaching Awards:
- Dr Albert Park (2024)
- Dr Dan Hodgkinson (2019)
- Professor Nikita Sud (2013)
- Professor Laura Rival (2010)
- Professor Nandini Gooptu (2008)
- Professor Jocelyn Alexander (2007)
The awards recognise excellence in teaching and learning.
The course comprises five elements: foundation courses, research methods, the core course, the thesis and two option courses.
In the first year, you will study two out of three foundation courses:
- Economics
- History and Politics
- Social Anthropology
If you have no previous training in economics you must take this as one of your foundation courses; otherwise you must take the other two.
You will also learn about research methods for the social sciences, comprising sessions on research design and qualitative and quantitative methods. Additional sessions will be held on aspects of fieldwork ethics and preparation, library resources and software and computerised databases.
The core course, also taken in the first year, is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary course with two component modules:
- Ideas about Development
- Key Themes in Development
You will spend the summer following your first year preparing to write your 30,000-word thesis. You will choose the topic, with the guidance of your supervisor, and, in most cases, spend some of the summer doing fieldwork and gathering data.
In the second year, you will take your chosen option courses and continue work on your thesis, which is submitted at the start of the final term. More information can be found in the course handbook.
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Foundation Courses
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Economics
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History & Politics
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Social Anthropology
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Core Course
The Core Course introduces students to the multi and inter-disciplinary nature of development studies, alongside concepts and tools that enable critical engagement with a wide range of theories and themes. This is not a ‘how to’ course; it is primarily concerned with the intellectual challenges of understanding processes of social, economic and political change.
There are two components to the course, running over the first two terms:
- Ideas about development: social, political and development theory
- Key themes in development
Rationale
As a relatively new field, Development Studies has engaged with ideas from sociology, geography, anthropology, economics, and politics, among others. This fertile yet contested ground is represented in our topics for Term 1. This term is intended to introduce you to some of the key ideas about development. Throughout this term, we emphasise that ‘development’ is not a single, coherent idea; it is a shorthand for an array of historically constructed and much disputed ideas. We need to understand the origins of these ideas, when and why have they have held appeal, their political uses, and their effects. We will explore them from different disciplinary perspectives. Lectures are arranged to reflect the chronology of when particular theories, which evolve over time, have been especially pertinent.
In Term 2, we turn to key narratives and debates in development. The coverage is by no means exhaustive, exposes students to innovative research in the field, and draws in policy implications where possible. Important issues that are typically covered include the state and good governance, global health politics, law and social order in development, gender and development, agriculture, urbanisation and its discontents, social policy in the Global South, and development. Development encompasses many narratives, which may not always come together in a synthesis. At the end of the course, we shall endeavour to have a cross-cutting conversation to assess some of these parallel, complementary and conflicting discourses.
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Option Courses
Please note that available options change from year to year. Below is a list of some of the options that were available to second-year students in 2023-24; there is no guarantee that the same options will be offered in future years.
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Climate Questions from the Global South
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Gender and Development
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Poverty and Human Development
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The Nexus of Violence, Crime and Politics in the Global South
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Technology and Industrialisation in Developing Countries
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The Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa
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The Politics of Film in Africa
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Pathologies of Power: Politics, Epidemics and Global Health in Africa
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Thesis
You will spend the summer following your first year preparing to write your 30,000-word thesis. You will choose the topic, with the guidance of your supervisor, and, in most cases, spend some of the summer doing fieldwork and gathering data.
In the second year, you will take your chosen option courses and write your thesis, which is submitted at the start of the final term.
A number of MPhil students choose to continue to doctoral study after completing the course, taking their MPhil thesis and expanding it further into a DPhil thesis. Others have gone on to jobs in the United Nations, government, NGOs, the media, business, finance and development consultancies.
Overview
Structure
Careers
Please refer to the course webpage on the University's Graduate Admissions pages for full information on selection criteria, application deadlines and English language requirements.
Contact us
Enquiries about the MPhil in Development Studies should be addressed to the Graduate Student Administrator, admissions@qeh.ox.ac.uk.