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.”
Adil Hossain is a DPhil candidate in International Development at Merton College, University of Oxford, where he holds the Merton-QEH scholarship.
His academic background is multidisciplinary, having received his undergraduate degree in Geography and an MA in Mass Communication from Aligarh Muslim University, India. Thereafter he secured a Commonwealth Scholarship to study another master's degree in Anthropology of Development and Rights at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Apart from academics, he had a background in journalism before starting his research at Oxford and previously published political and developmental pieces with many media organisations including Guardian, Scroll, Fair Observer, Sunday Guardian, Catch News, DNA etc.
He was previously known in India due to his Right to Information (RTI) activism and Indian magazine Outlook in 2010 profiled him as one of the top five youth RTI activists in the country.
2014-15 Awarded Merton-QEH full scholarship at University of Oxford to pursue DPhil
2012-13 Awarded Commonwealth Shared Scholarship for master’s in UK
2012-13 Selected as a of the first batch of Ambassadors by London University International Partnership programme
2013 Longlisted in Guardian International Development Journalism competition
2010 Profiled as India’s leading ‘young RTI activist’ by Outlook magazine.
Adil has a wide range of teaching interests in accordance with his fields of study.
At Oxford University, he is tutoring an undergraduate student from Stanford University in a module on the politics and anthropology of South Asia.
He was previously awarded a Junior Research Fellowship by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, India, qualifying him to teach at Indian universities. Outside Oxford, he has given lectures on transitional justice and communal violence in India at Presidency College, Kolkata and Goldsmiths, University of London.
Transitional justice and development; development as justice; democracy and reconciliation; politics of forgetting; post-conflict development