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.”
The main theories of oil conflicts, defined by Martinez-Alier (2002) and Escobar (2008) as ecological and cultural distribution conflicts, and influential in the study of Latin American indigenous movements (Schlosberg and Carruthers 2010), postulate that indigenous people, because of their ecological and cultural ‘difference’ (Escobar 2008) – a special attachment to the environment as a provider of livelihood or cultural identity – oppose oil extraction projects which threaten these environments. In Ecuador, such frameworks were denounced as a ‘standard narrative’ (Reider and Wasserstrom 2013), essentialising the struggles of indigenous people, which embody not only ecological and cultural dimensions, but economic, social, political and ethic ones (Fontaine 2004). For the counter-narrative, the Ecuadorian oil conflict is better described as the search for a ‘middle ground’ (Sabin 1998), and the various agreements found historically between indigenous people and large companies operating in their territories legitimise such criticism.
But what could a ‘middle ground’ possibly be if it involves an incommensurable loss related to the right to one’s ecological and cultural ‘difference’?
Through an analysis of the different perceptions and claims of indigenous people who have accepted oil extraction projects in their territories, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, I propose to investigate the many reasons underpinning that choice, but also the decision-making process itself and notably, the struggles involved in it. In addition to the intrinsic value of a better understanding of the struggles of indigenous people when facing oil extraction projects in their territories, my research derives important policy implications regarding oil extraction strategies in Latin America and the ability of the prior consultation to take indigenous people’s claims into account, and theoretical implications in political ecology and ecological economics, notably regarding the choice of policy decision-making tools in contexts of incommensurability of values.