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.”
In 1986 the Oxford University Institute of Agricultural Economics was amalgamated into Queen Elizabeth House. The Institute, which came into being in 1913, achieved considerable distinction for its work on the problems of British agriculture under the Directorships of C.S.Orwin and A.W. Ashby. The third Director (1953-69) was of a somewhat different stamp. Colin Clark (1905-89), though without formal training in economics, had established himself as a pioneer of national accounting techniques in the Cambridge of the 1930s (he was mentioned in Keynes' General Theory) and progressed to write one of the classic studies of growth (Conditions of Economic Progress). His name appeared prominently in the Meier and Seers book on 'Pioneers of Development' and there have been many other testaments to his international reputation. The Oxford period witnessed famous controversies on population and food supply, the publication (with Margaret Haswell) of 'The Economics of Subsistence Agriculture', and much other work on a wide range of subjects by no means confined to agricultural issues. The essay which is reprinted below originally appeared in the Italian journal Rivista di Economia Agraria (June 1995) as part of a series on major figures in agricultural economics, and was presented at an Agricultural Economics Society conference (Edinburgh, 1998). It is also the basis for a shorter entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1981-90 Supplement. The writer spent a considerable part of his early career as one of Colin Clark's research assistants. A number of people have been kind enough to suggest that the essay should have greater accessibility.