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.”
Professor Nikita Sud has won funding for a new 18-month project, which aims to explore the societal impact of the transition to green energy in India and Indonesia.
India and Indonesia are among the world’s largest, most populous countries. Indonesia is the largest exporter of coal, and India the second largest producer and consumer. Under worsening climate change, both countries are attempting to move away from coal, and towards a greener energy future of solar, wind, hydropower, and biofuels, etc.
Professor Sud will research the little understood societal consequences of energy transition in these fossil fuel hotspots. For this, she will qualitatively investigate key institutions, actors and processes that are entwined with the energy landscape. She will study the changing nature of the coal-powered state as it makes space for private, market actors in green energy. Further, as state-dominated coal mines and power plants are set to be replaced by green installations, she will probe political implications.
The study is multi-sited and multi-scalar. She will explore the national policy and processes of green transition as well as locally sited questions such as changing livelihood dynamics, and contested access to land and water for renewables. The methodology will cover textual sources, stakeholder interviews, and ethnographic research at sites of transition. The layered data that is generated will offer unique insights into societal change amid climate change. By comparing, contrasting, and studying two highly consequential cases together, the study will comment on a worldwide phenomenon from the vantage of the Global South.
The funding was awarded by the University’s John Fell fund.