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.”
Nearly 200 million hectares of topical forests were lost between 1980 and 1995, which led many conservationists to argue for a ban on all commercial logging and land conversion in tropical forest areas. Both logging companies and national governments were seen as sharing responsibility for the massive destruction of tropical rainforests, and various attempts were made to design new multilateral regimes, and new multipartite institutions for the global protection and sustainable management of key natural resources. In the 1990s, local partnerships were implemented to encourage private sector involvement in sustainable forest management and forest conservation. This paper describes a business partnership between a leading South American wood-processing group and a number of indigenous communities in one of the world's ten biodiversity 'hotspots.' It shows that the decentralisation of the development process, the recognition of local communities as legal entities in the management of natural resources, and the active involvement of profit-oriented firms in biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation, all contribute to the emergence of new alliances between government, the forestry sector, conservation and human rights organisations, and local forest communities. This case study highlights the role that private companies are able to play in changing environmentally damaging business practices, in fostering social development, and in reforming government policies. It also points to the dangers of uncritical reliance on market mechanisms to promote sustainability