The course focuses on the way economists think about development. Topics may include key concepts in economics (eg comparative advantage, the role of incentives) and applications to key contemporary issues (eg climate change, innovation and technological development, inequality). The goal is to provide students with an understanding of economics as a discipline that speaks to other social sciences and that can help explain some of the development dynamics that we see in developing countries.

This course introduces students to the ways in which the disciplines of history and politics have tried to understand key processes of change in the ‘Global South’. The lectures explore a selection of the concepts and methods these disciplines have developed and deployed, often in conversation with other disciplines. The course does not aim to be comprehensive in scope. It draws selectively from the modern history and politics of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, from the 1880s up to the present. Themes that the course addresses include processes of state formation; colonial and post-colonial forms of power, knowledge and identity; the constitution and reproduction of classes, movements, and political and social elites; nations and the politics of belonging; international orders; conflict and violence; and democracy.

The purpose of this course is to introduce some of the key theoretical approaches, debates and themes in anthropology today, while showing the relevance of the anthropological way of researching social life and conceptualising change to development studies. Anthropological perspectives have played a significant role in international development, not least through the training of prominent practitioners and critics who directly engaged in many development policy debates. This course will present anthropological concepts, methods, and approaches through a discussion of ethnographic works that centre ordinary people’s efforts to improve their lives, as well as their encounters with those who want to ‘modernise’ and ‘develop’ them.

This course will trace critical questions emerging within development studies and cognate disciplines on a rethinking of development in the face of climate catastrophe. We focus on the Global South for several reasons. As a degree, the MPhil in Development Studies draws its ideas and rationale from research and practice in the South. While development theory and practice have been Euro-centric, questions related to the environment and climate cannot be left to Northern agency. Apart from this pedagogical and political project, we know that the South is seeing some of the worst effects of climate breakdown in an inter-connected world. There are questions of equity and justice here. Global carbon emissions are skewed towards ‘developed’ countries. Further the South has grave inequalities, with climate catastrophe affecting people very differently. This course will engage with disciplinary debates, questions of power, politics and justice, as also longer-term learning on climate and nature in the South. We believe the South can be a space for understanding critical climate questions, as also a space for tackling them.

This option examines key concepts in gender and development relating to: population; land-use and the environment; employment, assets, markets and credit; social issues; civil society; violence and conflict; political organization and theories of power.

This option examines human development, seen as the expansion of capabilities or intrinsically valued freedoms, and scrutinizes the instrumental interrelationships between dimensions of poverty. It covers key topics and debates such as ethical foundations of human development; the interconnections between dimensions of poverty; multidimensional measures of poverty and inequality; and agency, empowerment and democratic practice. It explores particular cases in depth and addresses selected policy issues.

The focus of this course is then to examine the nexus of crime, violence and criminality through an interdisciplinary approach and across the Global South. We will explore questions such as: how is violence used to create and maintain order? How does this influence politics and governance? How do such arrangements differ across regions? And how does this shape the character of development?

This course aims to introduce key themes in political economy of the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). The option emphasizes an analytical approach that is both theoretically rigorous and empirically rich. Engaging with the dominant social science paradigms in institutional analysis, the course seeks to develop a new research lens for studying Middle Eastern political economy. Apart from building a general regional profile the course will also highlight key nuances and differences across the region, supported by readings on individual country experiences. With its multi-disciplinary orientation, the course will be accessible to students from a diverse range of academic backgrounds. Prior knowledge of economics or political science is not a pre-requisite for this course.

This course examines the key theoretical approaches to studying screen-cultures. These include, considering film-as-texts that create, challenge and reproduce social discourses through a set of sensory regimes (visual image, sound, speech, graphics, etc.) and that possess a remarkable authority to make truth claims. As such, students will develop an understanding of literary and artistic ways of viewing film narratives, in order to analyse films’ ideological underpinnings, aesthetic style and affective power. In addition to this, the course will also introduce ways of understanding the social, economic, political and technical dimensions in the production, dissemination and effect of screen cultures in Africa. Through anthropological and historical approaches, the course will consider questions about who films are for, how they are watched, and what role they play in broader processes of social and political change. Lastly, the course will introduce students to the technical, intellectual and ethical aspects and methods of conducting film-based research in regards to both the use of film archives and ethnographic film methods.

This course examines the politics of state-society relations, the workings of international development and humanitarian operations, and dynamics globalisation and modernity in Africa using epidemics as an organising framework for a series of historical and contemporary case studies.

This option course deals with the intellectual challenges of understanding processes of social, economic and political change from a normative perspective. Its aim is to introduce students to thinking normatively about development, with a special focus on the relation between human and ecosystem flourishing. Drawing on development ethics and environmental ethics, the course addresses questions such as: How should we value nature? Should we value nature for the services it offers, or as something sacred that implies responsibilities and obligations towards it? What are the practical and policy implications of the different ways of valuing nature? The course will enable critical examination of different ethical frameworks through which social and policy actors value nature, and of the different ways in which these frameworks are embedded and contested in national and international policy arenas.