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 Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at ODID has received a generous donation from Stuart and Jahana Jeffreys for their ongoing research linking human poverty and deprivations in environmental factors. While OPHI has already worked on these issues at the theoretical level, this new funding will allow them to undertake the first significant empirical study.
The study will focus on Madagascar, a least developed and low-income country in Africa with tremendous poverty and environmental challenges. According to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) which OPHI computes annually with the UN Development Programme, the country´s progress on poverty alleviation in the last decade has been modest: of the 31 countries whose starting MPI was 0.25 or above, Madagascar ranks 26th fastest in reducing its MPI, and of the 14 countries whose starting MPI was 0.4 or above, only Chad’s reduction was slower than Madagascar’s. The MPI ranges from 0 to 1, with higher values implying higher poverty.
At the same time, Madagascar has many environmental treasures as well as strains. It has very rich biodiversity, including a wide variety of wildlife, notably lemurs, but it is also losing its tropical rainforest cover at a rate that is the eighth fastest in the world, according to the World Resources Institute.
The study will clarify the interlinkages between poverty and environmental deprivations and articulate feasible policy actions. The research team will include Dr Sabina Alkire, the Director of OPHI, and Jakob Dirksen, a researcher with a strong interest in the environment. Methodologically it will implement a set of measures (as proposed in a 2018 paper) and analyse them. For policy impact and precise environmental expertise, the team will collaborate with Dr Herizo Andrianandana, regional director for the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development in Analamanga, the region surrounding Madagascar’s capital.