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.”
A new article by Olivier Sterck and Claire MacPherson of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) measures the impact of the self-reliance model of refugee assistance using data from the Kalobeyei settlement in Kenya.
Assistance to refugees is shifting from a humanitarian model, which focuses on protection, emergency relief, and shelter, to a development model promoting refugee self-reliance through income-generating activities, market development, and cash transfers.
Evidence on the effects of this paradigm shift is limited. Exploiting a regression discontinuity design, this paper tests whether the adoption of a development approach to refugee assistance in a new settlement in Kenya has a positive impact.
We find that refugees benefiting from the new approach have better diets and perceive themselves as happier and more independent from humanitarian aid. We find no effect on assets and employment. These effects appear to be driven by the switch from food rations to cash transfers and by the wider promotion of small-scale agriculture.
Our findings argue in favor of the development approach to refugee assistance, which is cheaper and leads to better outcomes.
Claire MacPherson and Olivier Sterck (2021) 'Empowering refugees through cash and agriculture: A regression discontinuity design', Journal of Development Economics, DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102614