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 Oxford Handbook of China Innovation, edited by Xiaoan Fu, Bruce McKern and Jin Chen, offers a contemporary and authoritative view of the role of innovation in China's extraordinary emergence.
Rising from a position of relative poverty in 1980, China is now the world's second-largest economy and a leader in many fields of innovation. Understanding China's new status as a technologically advanced world power and the means by which it has reached that position will be critical to policy-makers and business leaders in the years ahead.
The Oxford Handbook of China Innovation brings together more than 60 experts from universities and research institutions worldwide to describe and analyse this phenomenon with criticism, policy discussion, and views about further development. The volume focuses on the microeconomic factors in China's growth and the way in which the steady drive for innovation has been a critical force. Chapters cover a wide range of topics, including China's development policies, the place of innovation in national priorities, the components of the national innovation system, and the resources required for their effective deployment. The issue of foreign influence is also addressed, including the evolution of policy towards inward foreign direct investment and knowledge transfer and China's goals for outward foreign direct investment.
As China emerges as a contender for global leadership, the Handbook provides a data-driven, accessible, and comprehensive foundation to understand and predict the challenges ahead.
Xiaolan Fu, Bruce McKern and Jin Chen (eds) (2022) The Oxford Handbook of China Innovation, Oxford University Press